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."

Comments

I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say...

[Crimey McBiggles]

It's about time!

Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say

[Art Challenor]

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.

It's a new definition

[LeadSongDog]

... for "high speed trains"

funny comparing to "high speed rail" elsewhere

[iggymanz]

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....

Re:funny comparing to "high speed rail" elsewhere

[RevDisk]

It's optimized for freight, not passenger service. US has the most advanced freight railroad system in the world. Passenger service makes sense in some area, in others it will always be break even at best. 15,000 tons of coal is not something you need or want to move at 80+ MPH.

It doesn't receive a lot of attention (folks often want high speed rail for mass transit), but our rail network is pretty good for what makes economic sense.

Re:funny comparing to "high speed rail" elsewhere

[Miamicanes]

That's part of the reason why FEC (Florida East Coast Railroad) has never been actively *hostile* towards passenger trains, compared to railroads like CSX(*). FEC runs mile-long trains hauling limestone at 60mph on glass-smooth welded-rail tracks that are maintained to higher standards than some stretches of track in the NEC itself. FEC's one non-negotiable mandate for voluntary passenger service on their tracks has always been that someone else had to pay to lay down a second track, maintain it to FEC's no-compromise high standards, and equip every train that runs on them with in-cab signaling and the kind of automation rarely found outside of Japan(**).

Once Amtrak, Florida, and a federal funding act or two cleared the way for the feds to pay most of the bulk cost of double-tracking FEC from Jacksonville to Miami, FEC announced that Amtrak was welcome with open arms (Amtrak itself is still trying to scrape up funding for the trainsets themselves, or come up with a good way to split & join NY-Florida trains in Jacksonville so half can proceed straight down the east coast to Miami, and the other half can run to Orlando & Tampa (historically, Amtrak has always resisted splitting/joining trains anywhere besides an endpoint).

(*)About 15 years ago, FDOT approached CSX with a request to double-track it from Auburndale to Tampa for Tampa-Miami passenger rail. CSX refused. FDOT offered to TRIPLE-track it... and CSX still refused. Exasperated, FDOT offered to elevate a ~12 mile segment running through Lakeland, and CSX told them that the only way they'd voluntarily allow it is if FDOT agreed to let CSX refund the purchase price and demolish it at will if it later decided that the support columns or track structure were in the way of whatever they felt like doing. That was the turning point when FDOT decided that any future rail route between Orlando and Tampa simply *had* to run along I-4 instead of CSX... CSX was impossible to deal with in any sane way, and taking the corridor via eminent domain would have ended up costing more than building it down the middle of I-4 instead (I-4 was planned for complete reconstruction over the next 10-20 years anyway, and FDOT owned a fairly wide corridor that was straight and flat, so they just designed the empty space into the new road and bridges so it would be there when the day came to build the new tracks).

(**)FEC is a HUGE proponent of cross-training and automation, and because it operates entirely within a single state, it can get away with telling its union to go to hell over things that would get CSX crucified. For example, FEC requires all engineers and conductors to be cross-trained and capable of serving either role as needed (sensible and efficient, but *vehemently* opposed by railroad unions because it means the conductor can operate the train while the engineer takes a break, instead of having to staff a second engineer while the conductor twiddles his thumbs). I believe it also requires engineer-conductors to have college degrees.

Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say

[PhotoJim]

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.)

Behind on more than one metric

[damn_registrars]

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.

Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say

[Dutchmaan]

But then again, when does a program work out well that federal money supports?

You're communicating on it right now...

Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say

[Art Challenor]

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.

Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say

[milbournosphere]

Amtrak doesn't do horribly in the southern coast region, either. With the upgraded wifi, the only real argument against taking the train is the time required to move anywhere. From LA to San Luis Obispo is around 6 hours, vs 4 at the most via automobile. From SLO to San Diego, the end of the line, can take almost 10 hours at times. I can drive there in a little over half the time.

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.

Great news!

[Phoenix666]

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.

Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say

[squiggleslash]

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.

Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say

[betterunixthanunix]

then again, when does a program work out well that federal money supports

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_mission

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_highway_system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_canal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_dam

...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.

Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say

[Gothmolly]

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."