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my personal conspiracy theory is that Amtrak exists solely to make train travel look bad, driving up private car sales.
I had a long career in ecommerce and the amtrak website has been annoying to book train rides on for the entirety of its existence. It would be trivial to improve it in any number of ways but it's got (and maintains) the design patterns of a captive audience portal like ssa.gov instead of doing anything that removes barriers to purchase.
While it's possible they have just had the same not very good at their job person for the entirety of the sites history (decades now) i very much doubt it. The company's site today gives the same feel as when it started; they really don't care if you buy a ticket or not and they aren't really going to do much to help you do it.
I can get on board with this theory. They're also insanely slow and nearly as expensive as air travel. I understand some of this is due to the rail network and who owns it, but it still seems like Amtrak hasn't improved one bit since the 1950s.
I used them once to get from Tampa to Miami. It was fine. We got there over an hour late. I wouldn't really want to take a longer trip.
You aren’t wrong, BUT Amtrak does a decent job maintaining their trains and service despite the odds.
Amtrak recently received a huge infusion of funding under biden so of course trump wants to kill it.
i do like the trains! The Coast Starlight is amazing and the view from the observation car is just heaven.
The Empire Builder is another good train although the scenery on that route can't compare with the west coast.
The conspiracy theory isn't that the automotive industry makes them look bad, it's the rail owners.
Real: Amtrak doesn't own any rails, they lease them and legally are supposed to have right of way on tracks unless the owner/operators of the rail currently have their own train that's too big for the bypasses.
Conspiracy: Rail owners make Amtrak experience so painful that it drives down usage so Amtrak runs fewer and fewer trains, so they can be less of a nuisance to them or outright get rid of the service line and they get to completely ignore Amtrak