Submitted by RoughRhinos t3_11eazmj in philadelphia
I was looking to book Amtrak in April to DC and noticed a lot of $10 fares. This was true going to NYC as well. Same in May. Most times are a lot more but if you leave early morning or after 7pm they seem easy to find even on weekends. The fares back to Philly vary more but found some for $10. Additionally going to Baltimore I found one way for $5 which is crazy cheap.
I planned a trip to NYC recently and kept checking Amtrak regularly from about 5 weeks before the trip. Never saw anything below $70 one way. Finally just said fuck it and bought Megabus about a week out for $30 roundtrip.
I think I got a $20 one way Philly to NYC fare once. I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong but it doesn’t seem that easy to me at all.
Amtrak fares are a complete joke, in general, too.
The base one-way fare between NYC and Philly is $19. If you're booking early enough you'll see those on the northeast regional.
And for some reason available for $10 at certain times
They run promos during lulls. I remember seeing something similar last year in february.
That seems off. Looking between the next 1-3 weeks I see several options <$80 round right now. If you leave later or earlier in the day there’s even a few options for $20-30 round. If you expand the timeline it should be even cheaper.
The Acela and NE regional will always be the more expensive trains, the Keystone Service is usually the cheapest in my experience. I usually travel in Friday evening and leave Sunday and haven’t ever paid more than $40 one-way.
But yeah it should definitely be cheaper. It would be nice if I could wake up in the morning and just spontaneously go to 30th street and not have to spend $100+. There is always the SEPTA-NJTransit route for that, though it’s about an hour slower.
I was looking to be in NYC before 3 pm on a Saturday and leave around 11am to 2 pm on the following Monday and there was nothing reasonable. Maybe a Saturday-Monday is harder to find than Friday to Sunday?
It’s definitely worth looking to see if you can get a deal, especially if you’re very flexible, but I find them kind of frustrating if you’re on any sort of schedule. The pricing structure is totally ridiculous to me. Most other countries would have either set or a much smaller window of movement in price for a 90 minute to 2 hour train ride but here it can be between $19 and like $150. Bonkers.
PA Amtrak rides I believe are set prices. Maybe California as well. No matter what it will be $21 one way to Lancaster from Philly which honestly is a little annoying because it feels too pricey but it is nice to book 20 minutes before the train ride. Really wish Amtrak would get rid of dynamic pricing for the whole system though. And add more sleeper options for way way cheaper.
I used to ride Amtrak in California and yeah it was always the same price. Except the years they raised the price of course
It would need a lot more capacity to be able to get rid of dynamic pricing without every train being sold out well in advance. I don't know if there are any tunnel limitations but hopefully they can get double deckers on the NER at some point.
I go to NY once a month at similar times. That is the busiest time, so you have to book further ahead to get the lower fares. Once those $19 fares are sold out, they don’t come back because they are nonrefundable. I try to book at least 2 months ahead for the winter and 3 months ahead for summer to ensure I get the cheapest tickets. If there’s a holiday, you need to book even further ahead.
> I was looking to be in NYC before 3 pm on a Saturday and leave around 11am to 2 pm on the following Monday and there was nothing reasonable. Maybe a Saturday-Monday is harder to find than Friday to Sunday?
I checked second weekend in April for those days/times (since we are talking about ordering in advance), to-from are about $38 on average each.
Closer to the date could be $50+, and you might not be that flexible on time.
If you can get to Trenton or Hamilton. You can take nj transit for 32$ round trip. I take it all the time.
i go to brooklyn every few weeks to see family and have always bought my ticket no earlier 2 days ahead of the trip (chronic procrastinator who doesn’t decide to make the trip until days before). i’ve always found mid day tickets for under $70.
My experience is like yours (unreasonably expensive). I can't ever make Amtrak make sense financially, even though I love a train ride. For kicks I just looked up Wilmington DE to Baltimore on a random Friday a few weeks from now. Every ticket is more than $100 per person, one way. Especially when traveling with multiple people there is no way to justify train over driving.
I don’t know about the routes down around Baltimore but I don’t see any reason to drive Philly to NYC even if Amtrak doesn’t make sense. There are so many cheap buses daily I couldn’t even count. And the Septa to NJT connection. The tolls over the bridges or through the tunnel alone are about as much as a one-way bus ticket. Then you’ve got gas and parking.
I actually choose Megabus over the Septa/NJT connection because it’s more comfortable and I can just fall asleep and not have to change trains.
Easy explanation - we're a family of four. Multiply all transit expenses by 4, while toll gas and parking is fixed price. I've been actively looking for an excuse to take a train trip and I cannot make it a reasonable decision. Currently I'm thinking about Newark for Union @ Redbulls, and could at least take the PATH into the city from there.
Good point, I often forget that since I never really buy for more than two and if I’m going with a group, it’s friends who take care of themselves financially.
My main priority is not driving personally and zoning out or falling asleep so if I’m in a group of 3 or more where someone else wanted to drive, that would not be a bad option.
Lol I want to take the kids on an Amtrak trip so bad. I'm like, hmm well if we leave at 10 PM it's "only" $66 per person. One way. Sure it's 8x more expensive than driving, and sure we arrive at midnight, but the 5 y/o will prob be fine ...
There should really be a amtrak cheap kid price to help families out! If planning a trip anytime soon check out around the 7pm slot - there's a lot of $10 tickets at that time and for a family of four that's really not bad for a weekend getaway.
Right? I seriously love taking trains. I’m willing to pay a bit of a markup over other options to support rail service and because it’s fun. But it’s essentially never worth it when I do the math for the times I want to travel, the difference is way too extreme.
> 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.
Yes, the pet policy on Amtrak sucks!
Looks like the max weight is 20 pounds for pet + carrier which is really restrictive.
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.
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.
That's like being the top turd in the cesspit.
As someone who goes up to NYC somewhat frequently on Amtrak I cannot stress enough how much of a difference maker booking a few weeks out makes. You can do it for $40 or less round trip with the right planning. Something I do is if I think I’ll be going up during a certain month, I’ll just book it for an estimated weekend and bank the tickets. If I end up having to adjust or push the trip later, it may cost a little bit depending on how close I make the change, but I can move them and still pay less than if I made the reservation last minute.
I've never seen them that low to NYC, but it's a rule of thumb: if you can plan in advance, you can get best seats for the best prices (or super low). That's how I travel Acela business class, if I know that NYC trip is coming up in a couple of months or so.
I had to travel to NYC recently on a shorter notice (4-5 days or so), depending on time of day those tickets were very affordable as well (I think I paid under $100 total) - just have to leave early/come back later.
$29 round trip let's fucking goooo
Why go to NYC or DC when you could come to Reading for $4 more? Ò_o
I’ve been to Reading twice to see shows at the Santander Performing Arts Center, which was great. But other than that, what is there to do in Reading? Genuine question. What was I missing?
There's some great beer in Bethlehem
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They need to restore SEPTA service and the state of PA needs to restore the Lehigh corridor between Harrisburg to NY via Reading and Allentown.
You're not wrong, but I lived in West Reading for a while as a student at the hospital and the Reading Public Museum and the adjacent park and planetarium are a lovely area to spend a day.
I just booked a NYC round trip from Friday to Sunday for $18 total
I’m looking at May 6 and saw tickets as cheap as $10 but I ended up paying close to $90 for my round trip
Also it works best if you get the Pennsylvanian or the Keystone because those are subsidized by the state of Pennsylvania if you're heading to NYC.
Don’t forget how much you’re saving on tolls, gas, and parking.
I booked a ticket from Cornwell heights station in the NE round trip for me and my kid for 50 bucks for the both of us . Going to spend a couple days seeing some Broadway plays and eating Tangerine Chicken over her spring break.
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Paid $400 round trip for 2 people in 2021 . Best trip ever no regrets
I paided 400$ for the 6 roundtrips I did all over the NE from NYC during 20-21 yr. Amtrak priced a lot of its routes very low during covid so im not sure how you paided 400 for a roundtrip for 2 ppl on a corridor service.
hdhcnsnd t1_jacyp8v wrote
Yup, you just have to book ahead. I usually have no problem finding ~$40 round trip between NYC/Philly a week or two out. The price gets better if you can plan further out.
It’s cheap, fast, comfortable, low stress and has some nice views along the way.
If you are traveling to somewhere along the NEC from Philly and aren’t taking Amtrak, you should be! We live along the best train corridor in the US.