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Amtrak Upgrades Wi-Fi
New submitter WillgasM writes "A bit of good news for American travelers, according to the New York Times: 'After years of criticism of the wireless service on its trains, Amtrak announced on Thursday that it had upgraded its cellular-based Wi-Fi using broadband technologies that will improve the speed and reliability of the Internet in its passenger cars.' So far the service has been rolled out on the high-speed Acela lines and a few routes in California, but they hope to have the rest of their trains upgraded by the end of Summer. We're still an order of magnitude away from high-speed rails in other countries, but it's nice to know someone's trying."
It's about time!
Crimey
I think it's still true that Amtrak carries more passengers in the Washington, Boston, New York travel corridors than do the all the airlines combined. Those are the "high-speed Acela lines". Of course, it's just a coincidence that the lines that carry the most politicians are actually funded and effective, while the rest of the country languishes due to underfunding.
... for "high speed trains"
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
amtrak has a couple places they'll go to 110 MPH, and mostly 80 MPH is the limit. On good old 18th and 19th century style rails-on-wood-in-pebble ballast. I could drive my dodge caravan around at 100MPH too and call it a high speed sports car....
The US northeast is the busiest rail transportation corridor in all of North America. It makes far more sense cost- and speed-wise to take the train between most destinations there.
We recently vacationed in the area (a year ago) and took Amtrak from Washington to Baltimore and back, from Washington to Philadelphia and from Philadelphia to Manhattan. It was reasonably quick, comfortable enough, and super convenient. I can't overstate how much nicer it is to walk on a train instead of having to pass through airport security. (As a nice bonus, flying home from Newark instead of Philadelphia or Washington saved us about $150 each.)
They set up a captive portal on the trains, put the antennas on the outside. Probably just upgrading from a 3g cell card to one that supports 4g. The cell signal outside the rail car is much better than trying to get a signal inside a metal can. You're also assuming that everyone has a phone. What about wifi only devices? There's many a laptops that benefit from using the wifi/cell service they're providing.
I'm not sure why we should be so worried about lack of Wi-Fi when most of us don't have access to high speed rail, period. The only current high-speed line on the Amtrak system is on the east coast, which connects the biggest east coast cities but does nothing for anyone else. We can't really start comparing Amtrak to actual high speed rail until we start connecting more cities at speeds greater than what the average Hyundai can achieve. There is plenty of demand from passengers tired of requisite anal probes at the airports, it is time to produce a real plan and go forward. NYC->Chicago would be a great start for one.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
But then again, when does a program work out well that federal money supports?
You're communicating on it right now...
Amtrak gets very little money compared to the airlines. All the airports are built and staffed with public funds. The airlines pay "landing fees". The FAA including controllers are on the public payroll.
Part of the problem with trains is there's very little political graft involved. You get an airport, you get tax money to build it, maintain it, etc. etc. etc. Looks good on your political resume. With a train, you get a (relatively) small station and then 600 miles of track - most of which is not in your district. The only reason you'd ever support that is if you put the public good first, and that's not about to happen.
That said, the seats are comfortable, the cars are relatively quiet, the wifi seems to be improving, and I've had worse free coffee. It beats driving on cost, and beats flying on both cost and convenience in that I don't need to give up my civil rights to get on the train (yet). I yearn for the day that CA and other places have high speed rail.
Not just coincidence. It's fact. In the early days of Amtrak in the early 1970s, most of the routes catered to whomever was in a position of power in elected office. Ten years prior to Amtrak, railroads were in dire financial condition and federal regulators required them to run the passenger trains even if they were empty. Railroads were so anxious to get out of the moneypit passenger hauling business that they deferred maintenance on passenger cars and right of way to drive passengers away, even to the point of replacing dining service with impersonal vending machines. By the time Amtrak took over, there was no money to replace the 30-year-old badly neglected rolling stock. Most of the distribution of equipment was subject to the whims of politicians.
Today the northeast corrider still gets the bulk of the revenue and service upgrades, but at least the other routes now travel with modern clean well riding equipment.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
i've flown the delta shuttle NYC to Boston pre-911 and it was FAST. we would take the 7am to boston and be back by 5 for dinner. arrive 20 minutes before the flight and just get on the plane
post 9-11 you have to get to the airport early to stand in line, wait around and sit in your chair and wait
might as well take the train with wifi, better seating, LTE access since its outside and a power outlet by your chair so you can charge your phone
same travel time
Train travel far exceeds air travel in the experience, especially if you get a sleeper compartment. You get your own TV, outlets, desk, toilet in your compartment, complimentary drinks, and access to all the first-class amenities. It's like travelling around in your little apartment or office. And there's something about working while the scenery flashes by that is mentally and creatively stimulating. When you get tired, you can lay down on a real bed. When you want to stretch your legs, you can walk the whole length of train if you want, without squeezing through the forest of elbows on the cattle cars they call "jumbo" jets.
You also get to go from city center to city center, so the connections to the train station are always easier and cheaper than getting to the airport and getting your anal probe from the TSA. Japan and Europe have had high speed train travel forever, on land masses roughly the scale of the US (Japan, for example, is longer that California, Europe is bigger than the continental US), so it can be done.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Historical accident, not politics. The NEC is the only part of the national rail system Amtrak actually owns.
Amtrak exists because a giant railroad company that operated most trackage in the North East called Penn Central was going bankrupt. In the early seventies it went to Nixon and said, essentially "We might survive if we can get rid of passenger service. which costs lots of money and isn't covering its costs for us. Hey, whatsay we make passenger service a government program, and then you guys can screw it up even more and close it down after two years? Then we can sell all the track we no longer need, cover our debts, and just do nice profitable freight in future."
(You probably think I'm doing a dig at Amtrak there with the "government program" and "screw it up" bit, but actually, that really was the plan. I'm not kidding. A few years after Amtrak's creation, Louis W. Menk, the then chair of the Burlington Northern, actually blurted it out in public, saying that the government was making a mess of screwing it up. Look it up.)
So, anywho, the other railroads were also invited to join, as most (but not all) were having similar problems. Amtrak was formed. Penn Central went bust anyway.
The bankrupt Penn Central was then reconstituted as Amtrak and Conrail. Amtrak got the NEC. Conrail got the rest. Conrail became amazingly profitable, was privatized, and finally split between CSX and NS. Amtrak has finally gotten the NEC to be profitable over the last few years, though the rest of its passenger service is still technically "loss making". But the non-NEC services suffer from not being under its control. It can't run Acela Express services on CSX tracks, for example, because it would need massive upgrades to lines that Amtrak would barely benefit from.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
then again, when does a program work out well that federal money supports
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_mission
...just to name a few. I guess if you just ignore the successes of the US government (except for your personal favorite), though, federal money would seem to be wasted on failure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_highway_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_canal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_dam
Palm trees and 8
There at one point was a serious proposal to get a high-speed rail line starting from San Diego and expanding north. It got shot down by Orange County, because the residents were worried that those trains would bring the wrong sort of people into their neighborhood.
I am officially gone from
People don't understand how large and empty most of the US is.
The rest of the country languishes because everything is so far apart. Do you want to spend days on a train to get from Chicago to LA, or do you want to spend 4-5 hours on a plane? Even high speed rail can't beat a jet. In the Northeast the density of cities plus the ability to work/talk/move around on a train trumps the cost and hassle of air travel, elsewhere not so much.
"Hello air travel? It's train travel... you win."
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Most politicians fly private jets "loaned" to them by "concerned" parties. Or are married to centi-millionaires who can just give them their own jet.
I think you meant hecto-millionaires (i.e persons having more than 100million bucks), since the hecto- prefix means one hundred of a quantity. The centi- prefix means one hundredth of a quantity, so a centi-millionaire has a mere 10thousand bucks. There are lots and lots of centi-millionaires, and not many of them have their own jet...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Wait, are you calling me fat?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The only difference is whether the cargo is self-loading or not.
I think we'll all enjoy 4 seconds of free WiFi.
If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
If its picking you up in Lakewood or making other stops on the way, it's not the "high speed" you're thinking of.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
What about leg room over time? I spend 4 hours in the air with little leg room, and then I get all the leg room I want. During that same distance on a train, you get adequate legroom for 2 days.
frankly, I would rather be uncomfortable for 4 hours then on a train for 2 days
and I've seen most of the country, and most of it is blah. the rest is interesting for 10 minutes.
"Also, quite interestingly, it's the standard way to travel long distances for Amish and Mennonites."
no, that's' not interesting at all. it's what we call 'expected'.
moving hotel room? yeah, if you spend about 800+ per night. I was thinking of taking my family from PDX to Los Angels(then renting a car and going to disney)
total train cost? 1500 dollars.
flight? 1000 dollars.
driving 750 dollars.
so of the three option trains was the most expensive and the slowest.
.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
US airports are quite heavily subsidized, actually. Canadian airports are run on a cost-recovery basis and as a result, US cities near the Canadian border siphon a significant portion of the Canadian traffic.
Canadians thank you for subsidizing their trips. Have a nice day.
Between Boston, NYC, and DC, Amtrak runs the really fast Acela trains, the pretty fast Metroliners, and the slower local trains. There's also lots of commuter train service in the Northeast that isn't Amtrak, such as New Jersey Transit, the Long Island Railroad, SEPTA, DC Metro, etc. Back in the 1980s and early 90s I used to take the trains from New Jersey to DC (before the Acela started, so Metroliner if I could, or the slow trains otherwise.) Depending on where I was going in DC, it was often faster to take the train, because there's a lot less "hurry up and wait" and the train stations were more centrally located.
Outside the northeast, Amtrak runs passenger service, mostly long-haul, with occasional shorter-distance service like the trains from San Francisco Bay Area up to Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. That service runs on the same rails that carry freight trains, and freight has higher priority, so sometimes the passenger trains have to wait. I've never been on one that mixed passengers and freight, but I suppose it's possible that they're doing some of that these days.
Back when I was taking the trains, Wifi hadn't been invented, most people didn't have cell phones, and cell phones mainly worked near the city; there was a big service gap between Baltimore and Philly. I was once in one of the dining cars, and the old guy sitting across from me had the smallest cellphone I'd ever seen (a Motorola flip-phone analog), the smallest laptop I'd ever seen (a 6-pound IBM model you could only get in Japan), and an alphanumeric Skytel pager (which was also cool.) He was Professor Dave Farber, then of UPenn, and he'd just been working on the EFF founding :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks