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Amtrak cuts service due to reduced demand
By adamg on Sun, 03/15/2020 - 1:32pm
Starting Monday, Amtrak is cutting its Northeast Corridor service to Saturday schedules; there just aren't as many people riding Acela these days.
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Comments
I can't entirely blame them,
I can't entirely blame them, but...
Not great timing with college students being sent home.
If I had to travel right now and had no car option, I would want train over plane. Also, transportation systems should be staying open for those who do need to get somewhere (and at normal capacity, otherwise just restoring people density.
Transportation
The NEC is only the Boston-NYC-Philly-DC corridor, though. Many college students in Boston hail from other parts of the country, where train service was already virtually non-existent/impractical (eg. once a day service, much slower yet more expensive than plane).
Yes, transportation systems should be kept open close to normal capacity to reduce density, but this would only make sense for urban public transit (eg. MBTA), not intercity transportation. There are no standees on most Amtrak trains to begin with, and Amtrak seats are actually less dense than airplane seats.
The Saturday schedule is
The Saturday schedule is actually better than the weekday schedule in some ways. It runs closer to hourly, while the weekday southbound schedule tends to run an Acela followed by a Regional a few minutes later, then a big gap.
I have a feeling they did this to squeeze in weekday service between Providence Commuter Rail trains. I'm not sure how they would fit the Saturday schedule into the weekday Commuter Rail schedule.
The only problem I have with the Saturday schedule is that the last northbound train from New York is at 8 pm (except for the slow 2:40 am train). There's no 9 pm train like on other days.