I’M NOT EXACTLY “Amtrak Joe” Biden, but I’ve been riding the Northeast Corridor for many years – long enough to remember when the stretch from New Haven to Boston still ran on diesel locomotives. And, in so many important ways, things have improved in that time: the courtesy and professionalism of the on-board crews, the real time information available about delays, the condition and cleanliness of the trains, and many of the stations.  

Delays happen, of course, as with any other mode of transportation, and most riders understand that America’s crumbling infrastructure is not Amtrak’s fault. The improvements to antique railroad bridges and other transportation infrastructure planned under the Inflation Reduction Act should start to address some of the causes for disrupted schedules, but this will take time. 

Once you’re on the train and in your seat, the experience of riding an Amtrak train on the Northeast Corridor is normally pretty great. There’s no traffic to contend with, the coastal views along some stretches are pretty spectacular. You can just sit back and relax, read, talk with your travel companion if you’re with one, work on your computer, or even take a nap if you want. You arrive at your destination rested and relaxed, instead of stressed out from driving I-95. And you’ve done a good deed for the environment, keeping another car off of the road. 

The problem, far too often, is not with the ride, but with managing to get on the train and in your seat in the first place. And what perplexes me is that so much of the frustration that happens prior to putting your seat back could be so easily fixed. 

Amtrak doesn’t need to spend $18 billion to fix the Hudson River tunnel to address these problems (although the tunnel needs to be fixed, too). They need their IT department to make a few changes to their website and their app. 

Assigned seating — A few years ago, Amtrak adopted assigned seating for business class passengers. But all the seats on the train have an aisle and seat number, and there is no reason why every person making a reservation on a train shouldn’t be able to choose their seat. I typically travel alone, but I see parents with young children who would like to sit together as a family, and elderly people, or others with mobility issues, and folks traveling with luggage, for instance, whose experience would be far less stressful if they knew that they had assigned seats. And while the boarding experience at the new Moynihan Train Hall is much less chaotic than it was across the street at Penn Station, assigned seating would further reduce the stress of the boarding process.  

It’s time for Amtrak to end this crazy “festival seating” free-for-all. 

Publish a schedule –No one expects Amtrak to print paper train schedules like in the old days. But their refusal to post a schedule online is puzzling. Where I live in Connecticut, for instance, not all Northeast Regional trains stop at Mystic Station, a 10-minute walk from my house, or nearby Westerly, Rhode Island. In order to plan a trip, anyone wanting to know what their options are needs to enter the departure and arrival stations for one direction, then for the return trip. If that schedule doesn’t work, they have to try a different station and go through the process again until they find a station and schedule that works. This is tedious and unnecessary, and the website often freezes up during this process.  

Amtrak needs to post the Northeast Regional schedule online (like Metro North and the MBTA Commuter Rail do) so people can see at a glance when the trains stop at all the stations. If the schedule changes, it’s not as if they have to reset the printing presses and produce thousands of new physical schedules – they can change it with a few keystrokes. 

Disappearing tickets –Since Amtrak created a phone app several years ago, it’s been possible to show your ticket to the conductor on your phone, rather than printing it out and bringing it with you. Except when it isn’t. Twice now, I have brought up the app, usually to check if the train is running on time, and the ticket that was there just a short time ago is . . . gone. This is not only panic-inducing, but in both cases caused me to repurchase a ticket at the last minute at great expense. I’ve overheard conversations between conductors and passengers who seem to have experienced the same problem, so I suspect this doesn’t just happen to me. Get it together with this, please. 

Pricing is inscrutable — In October, Amtrak announced that it was “revising” its pricing schedule, so we’ll have to see what that’s about. I suppose the unpredictability of the previous method of pricing was related to demand, but I am merely speculating. There did seem to be some advantage to booking a trip at least two weeks prior to travel, which was the only “rule” I was ever able to discern.  

At the other extreme, I have had to make last minute reservations (see above, “Disappearing tickets”) and price gouging doesn’t even begin to describe it. If a train has seats left, and Amtrak can sell them to last-minute travelers, they should sell them at an attractive price. They have to run that train anyway, the costs are fixed, and if they sell more tickets for the empty seats, it’s all gravy. Instead, they repel last minute travelers from filling empty seats by charging ridiculous prices. Someone needs to explain this business strategy to me. 

If we want to get people out of their cars, we have to stop making it so hard for them to ride Amtrak. 

Peter O’Connor is a lawyer and former local and state government official. He can be reached at peteroconnorct@gmail.com.