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Levi Ramsey's avatar

It will be interesting to see if they go the route of granting lounge access to Guest Rewards elites (e.g. Select Plus gets access if in premium and Select Executive gets access even in regular coach): stable cash inflow from the credit cards is valuable (and helped fund Amtrak during the pandemic; I did my part!) but there's not much benefit beyond the AGR points themselves from the credit cards in most cities served by the long-distance network (the current elite benefits aren't worth anything on the LD network beyond lounge access in Boston/NYC/Philly/Washington/Chicago).

The gun locker isn't surprising: it's not generally admitted by either the 2nd amendment crowd or transit folks (since there's a very small Venn diagram there), but the absence of TSA makes Amtrak the conveyance of choice if traveling with a gun.

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Stranger267's avatar

Its bad. They must replace dumb coach by open space sleeping cars, like platscart in former USSR, or by 3d class sleepers like in EU. All passengers on overnight trains must have a normal sleeping place, but cheap class may be open space like coach and first class keep private. Cost if 1 class is prohibitive, and coach is unacceptable for the ling trips. Compare to RU:

- all classes are sleeping. No exceptions.

- cheap open space sleeping class hold 54 passengers in 1 level car, better rooms for 4 - no need to buy the whole room (you can do it but most people dont) keep 36 places in 1 level cars and 72 in 2 levels.

-trains are cheaper vs plane for 3d (open space sleepers) and 2d (4 people rooms) classes.

- food is extra but you can order delivery like uber eat, and it works great, or you can prepay dinner car, or use it as necessary. Cars has hot boiling water 24x7, too.

Longe cars should be available for all passengers. First class is good by itself but is way too expensive, for an obvious reason. Normal train in RU carry 500 - 1200 passengers (all sleepers, ALL!), amtrack carry only 90 such passengers, not a surprise it cost 5x more vs airplane (with a few exceptions ). Make it to carry 400 sleeping passengers in 3 classes and prices will be way more competitive.

Good idea is to expand bedroom to 4 people. Todays bedrooms can easily accomodate 2 adults + 2 kids, but its not allowed. How to travel jn family in 2 + 2 or 2 + 3 ? In RU people just buyb5 slerping berths in 2 rooms (and 3 3xtra are used as rooms are shared except if you decide to pay extra). Just now my friends travelled in group of 11, 3 nights, they just bought 3 x 4 rooms, approx $120 / person, not $1200 as in USA.

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