More Americans are taking the train than ever. In December, Amtrak surpassed its highest-ever ridership figures in a fiscal year, with 32.8 million passengers. (www.newsweek.com)

submitted 2 months ago by tree@lemmy.ml to c/urbanism@hexbear.net

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

all 7 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] Wolfman86@hexbear.net 20 points 2 months ago

Still surprises me how few train lines America has.

[-] turtle@lemm.ee 18 points 2 months ago

Interesting! I just happened to take my first Amtrak rides ever in November/December (around the Thanksgiving holiday), so I guess I contributed to it. They announced that the train was completely sold out, but they also said that that's the busiest travel time of the year.

[-] BeamBrain@hexbear.net 12 points 2 months ago

train-shining

[-] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago

Let me guess, the article is framing this as a problem to be solved?

[-] MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 months ago

Surprisingly, no. The framing of the article isn't bad and they have nothing poor to say about Amtrak (there's a lot to criticize imo). A couple things stood out: the article praises Amtrak overall, highlighting a quote early on about how they are modernizing and expanding rail travel in the US and there is zero mention of HSR.

A puff piece for Amtrak, though I'd love to see them actually modernize and expand services so that they are reliable, take priority over freight, modernize to include extensive HSR networks, expand their stations to more areas, and keep prices low enough to incentivize rail travel over car travel. My experiences with Amtrak have been quite bad, though I love traveling by train, so I may be a bit more critical of them.

An interesting quote that stood out that really puts the state of travel in the US into perspective: