I began this project with the premise that Amtrak is slow, inefficient and underfunded, but that traveling by rail has a host of social, psychological and environmental benefits. This project delved deep into those benefits, but at the risk of overly romanticizing rail travel or this sounding like an advertisement for Amtrak, I do have to expand on some of the drawbacks:

The network is not efficient

With the exception of the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak lacks the funding to compete with car and air travel for most Americans. Consider the following:

• The 819-mile trip from Beijing to Shanghai takes 4 hours and 28 minutes by rail, with more than 30 trains making the trip daily in each direction. The 959-mile trip from Chicago to New York City takes a minimum of 20 hours and 10 minutes — depending on the route taken — and is serviced by 17 trains per week in each direction.

• Phoenix is America’s fifth-largest city, and yet Amtrak trains stop in the suburb of Maricopa, 35 miles away, at 9:02 pm if you’re going westbound to Los Angeles, or 5:40 am if you’re traveling eastbound to New Orleans — and only three days a week.

• Salt Lake City is served at 11:30 pm westbound and 3:30 am eastbound.

• Cincinnati is served at 1:41 am westbound and 3:27 am eastbound — only three days a week.

• Las Vegas, Nashville and Boise have no passenger rail service.

• High-speed rail exists only between Washington, D.C. and Boston – and even then, reaching 150 mph for tiny stretches of its 457-mile span, while averaging about 68 mph for the entire route. In October 2021, The Points Guy website sent four travelers from Lower Manhattan to Boston in a race: Two flew commercially, one flew a seaplane and one took Amtrak’s higher-speed Acela. The Acela traveler came in dead last.

• Meanwhile, China, Spain, Germany, Saudi Arabia, France, Italy, South Korea, and Japan all have trains that exceed 200 mph.

The delays are real

Again, with the exception of the Northeast Corridor, freight rail companies own the tracks, and while they are supposed to give priority to passenger trains, the reality is that they do not, resulting in significant delays.

Fewer than half of Amtrak trains arrive on time.

A 2019 study found the average delay to be 49 minutes, with some trains arriving hours late.

And delays can happen on the Northeast Corridor, too. On my March 2023 trip aboard the Crescent, we sat in Rahway, NJ, for more than four hours due to a brush fire near the tracks. We never did make up the time, arriving into New Orleans at 2:45 am, instead of the expected 9:15 pm.

Service has been stripped down

If you have fond memories of sitting in a dining car booth with a tablecloth, having an attendant take your order from a menu, and being served a meal on real plates with real silverware, know that this is not the reality anymore. Dining car meals on most long-distance trains are warmed in a microwave, and come in a bag, with a tiny salad and a brownie.

Customer service usually stellar, except when it is not

I almost hate to include this point, give the many, many positive experiences I have had on Amtrak. When I traveled during the pandemic, I consistently said that one crew was better than the next. But there are exceptions worth noting.

In May 2022 aboard the Southwest Chief, I watched as roughly a dozen passengers boarded, and Amtrak would not have seats for them until others got off the train a few hours later.

On my March 2023 trip aboard the Crescent, Amtrak did not have enough meals for sleeper car passengers, so they ordered Domino’s Pizza from Birmingham, Alabama, and served each passenger one slice in lieu of the three-course meal included in the ticket. Passengers in the coach cars didn’t fare any better, as the cafe car was closed more often than it was open while the attendant sat on interminable breaks. (One month after I complained about this experience, I received a $300 voucher from Amtrak.)

If you are interested in planning your own train trip, I’ll offer a handful of tips on the next page.