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yogaballcactus t1_jae979v wrote

Reply to comment by hdhcnsnd in Pro-tip - currently there are easily found amtrak one way fares to DC and NYC from 30th Street for $10 in April and May by RoughRhinos

> If you are traveling to somewhere along the NEC from Philly and aren’t taking Amtrak, you should be!

I know we are pretty far away from a point where we focus on this kind of problem and that a lot of kinks would need to be worked out, but I would use Amtrak a LOT more if there was a way to bring a medium to large dog on it. If I could bring my dog then I could use Amtrak to go see my family for the holidays or go back and forth between my place in Philly and my girlfriends place in jersey city. As it stands right now, I have to own a car, which is incredibly annoying.

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hdhcnsnd t1_jaeca5q wrote

Yes, the pet policy on Amtrak sucks!

Looks like the max weight is 20 pounds for pet + carrier which is really restrictive.

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yogaballcactus t1_jaeg4ed wrote

Yeah. I think we have to get to a point where a critical mass of people are using public transportation as their primary or only form of transportation before there’s enough demand to solve these kinds of problems. We have to solve problems around cleanliness, safety and convenience system wide (so on all public transit, not just Amtrak) before we are going to get enough people using public transportation as their primary or only method of transportation. But once we get there, we’ll need to find ways for trains to transport everything cars do, from the family dog to the kids’ hockey equipment to a weeks’ worth of groceries.

And we’ll also have to be careful about how we solve these problems. I don’t want to sit next to an untrained or aggressive dog. I also don’t want someone else’s smelly hockey equipment piled up next to me. So there will have to be rules and ways of getting people to follow them.

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abrandnewhope t1_jaf2er6 wrote

And even then, it costs $39/way. In looking up fares to DC, I can find round trip fares for weekends in April for $40 per person, but the dog fare costs $78.

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