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I’ve long had this fascination with riding Amtrak’s “high-speed” Acela train. With my trip to New York this past weekend, the fascination has evolved into more of a desire to actually ride that particular train [service]. Now, there’s coach and business class on the ‘regular’ train, business class is slightly more… say from Philly it’s about $20 more, so a total ticket of roughly $60. The Acela is $110, almost double (business class again, no coach on Acela), and arrives a pathetic 10 minutes sooner.

Where’s the lure here? Granted, it’s not far from Philly to New York a bit over an hour using either a ‘regular’ train or the Acela. It simply doesn’t make any sense to spend nearly double to get there 10 minutes faster, one could say almost triple if comparing Acela to coach. If one were to depart from Baltimore the time savings isn’t much better.

Ten minutes here and ten minutes there… if I needed to travel from DC to Boston, then it would save quite a bit of time, but city to city, it’s a pointless waste of money. I still want to ride the Acela, just to have experienced the “high speed” train, but… it’s not significantly faster than the regular ol’ cheapie ticket.

I’m in New York as of yesterday afternoon, so… problems of the world that require my solutions will just need to be put on hold until I return to the countryside of home Monday night.