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I bailed on the old train option when it took me almost 6 hours to get to DC one time - something about rails getting too hot and limiting speeds to 45mph. Maybe I'll need to revisit that option.
6 hours is how long it normally takes with no delays.
The horror that is AA Gate 35X at Reagan National.
Wait upstairs with no available seats while people yell at you.
Go down escalator and wait while people yell at you.
Get on the bus and wait awkwardly until everyone slooooowwwly piles in.
Ride out to your plane.
Pray it's not raining or cold or 105 degrees.
Squeeze into a commuter plane and hope for the best.
I bailed on the old train option when it took me almost 6 hours to get to DC one time - something about rails getting too hot and limiting speeds to 45mph. Maybe I'll need to revisit that option.
Yeah that was absolutely horrible.
Not sure if this ever opened, haven't been to DC in a long time:
They were supposed to tear down the hangers and rebuild it.
That ridiculous gate situation was MWAA's making - the hangers were "historical" and not allowed to be touched for years. That was all ex-US Airways, remember AA exclusively used gates for all flights at their terminal.
All kinda moot now with Covid bringing us back to 1970 level passenger numbers for the foreseeable future. I doubt AA will survive.
Flying this route is obnoxious, though -- it saves maybe an hour on driving, all things considered, but it's "hurry up and WAIT" every 30-45 minutes, getting to the airport, getting through the airport, then on too short of a flight to be able to get a coffee or open up a laptop, etc.
By contrast, the train is just one hurry up & get to the station, then relaxing for a few hours. I find it's a nice amount of time to clear off a huge stack of reading, and take a nap. If it were a little faster but way more frequent, it would be perfect.
Driving on this route is alternately dull (most of I-85) and terrifying (most of I-95). Virginia has correctly realized that there's just no way to widen away I-95's woes, and therefore are encouraging rail in the corridor to absorb future travel demand growth. A fair amount of that demand is going beyond Richmond, including to places like the Triangle.
Regardless of energy source (and even as an EV driver, I'm very skeptical about the future of renewable powered flight), trains consume far less energy per passenger than either cars or planes, by virtue of having very little ground friction. There's a reason why just about every other advanced country has electric high speed rail in their dense corridors.
I totally agree.
There were times I was the only person in back on that flight. Not often, but it happened. All early morning departures from DC.
Trains - if done right in a high density corridor - make more sense and are much more relaxing (for now). Just wait till the TSA gets involved.
But, I think I'd rather have a 4-5 hour drive and have a car where I'm going than pay 5x+ as much for a train ticket and have it take almost as long.
What's crucial now for successful passenger rail service in the southeast is reliability. Amtrak has such a bad reputation that most people will never consider it because you never know how many hours late you're going to be. The improvements in Virginia will play a big part in removing freight interference, plus the states taking over the lines will prioritize passenger service. Add multiple frequencies that give riders several reliable options throughout the day to get from downtown to downtown, and you have a recipe for success, even if it's not true high speed rail like you see in Europe, China and Japan. Of course, it'd be wonderful if we could have a true high speed rail service on the east coast and get to D.C. in 2 hours and New York in 4 (or less), but I can't imagine there being any benefit from such a service for the tens of millions of people living here. Maybe in another decade or two we'll have caught back up to the level of passenger rail service that was seen in the 1930's.
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