(The following column by Tom Belden appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on January 28.)
PHILADELPHIA — Any time we mention Amtrak in this column we usually hear from just a handful of readers. And in contrast to the e-mails and calls we can get from embittered travelers about certain airlines, comments about Amtrak service in the Northeast tend to be remarkably positive.
When we wrote two weeks ago about the escalation of air fares between Philadelphia and Boston, several readers of the Road Warrior blog (http://go.philly.com/roadwarrior) told us what they like about taking the train. Here’s an excerpt of one comment:
“I’ve taken far more Amtrak trips up and down the coast lately. The travel time isn’t that different, once you include ground-stop delays, security hassles, and parking/rental car issues. They drop you off in the middle of town. The seats are far wider than anything on a CRJ/ERJ/reconfigured coach class 737/A32x [Those are all airplane models.] And, you have 110v power at every seat.”
The traveler also cited the cost of a round trip on US Airways between Philadelphia and Hartford, Conn., as an example of what a rail passenger could save. If you had to buy an airline ticket today for travel tomorrow, you could pay $600 to $950. Amtrak’s coach fare up and back could be as little as $128.
For many business trips, of course, Amtrak (www.amtrak.com) isn’t a practical alternative. While a round trip between Philadelphia and New York, Washington, and a few other nearby cities is easy to do in a day, Philadelphia-Boston takes about six hours each way. Amtrak in the Northeast Corridor isn’t cheap, either, especially if you use the slightly higher-speed Acela trains.
A small number of business travelers who are afraid to fly or who just love riding trains use Amtrak for longer, overnight trips. Between Philadelphia and Atlanta, Chicago or Jacksonville, Fla., for instance, you can leave in the afternoon and arrive the next morning. If you want a good night’s rest and a shower in the morning, however, you need to use the first-class sleeping-car service, which will probably exceed the cost of flying.
Another consideration when using Amtrak is its on-time record. While it’s usually better than the airlines in the Northeast Corridor, it’s worse than the airlines on many long-distance trains.
An economical and practical way to include Amtrak as part of a long-haul trip is the combination of air and rail service offered by Continental Airlines at its hub at Newark Liberty International Airport. Under this code-sharing arrangement, you buy a single ticket from the airline for a train ride from 30th Street Station to the Newark Airport rail stop, where you hop a people mover that takes you to the terminal to catch your flight. Continental often has the lowest fares between Philadelphia and many places to the west using the combination.