this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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[–] DigitalDruid@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

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.

[–] CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

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