Amtrak

October 30, 2014 | transit | travel | dc |

I took the Amtrak train for the first time from Philadelphia down to Washington DC this weekend and I was pleasantly surprised at how awesome it was! I spent a lot of time out on the road these past few years, so I have gotten used to the many annoyances of airline travel and mass transit. The last time that I was on a non-commuter train was in Ukraine when I was very young. It was certainly a very different experience to say the least! Here are my favorite parts about Amtrak:

You can get your tickets on your smart phone a few minutes before the train leaves. A very stress free experience!
Even with a lot of people riding the train the boarding process is smooth, quick, and painless.
There is usually a ton of room on board.
The seats are big and comfy, even in coach!
They have a power outlet at every seat.
They have free wifi.

Taking the train was so much better than driving down I-95 and dealing with the traffic. It was a very relaxing and enjoyable experience. It is a shame that the train system only seems to make sense on the East Coast (and perhaps the West Coast too). For example, in Cincinnati there is only one train that comes a few times a week at around 3:00 a.m. Most people in Cincinnati do not even know that the Amtrak comes there. I am not sure if we will ever get to experience an efficient high speed rail system in the US, but I am looking forward to a few more trips up and down the East Coast!

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

A eulogy for Vim from Drew DeVault's blog
Pluralistic: AI "journalists" prove that media bosses don't give a shit (11 Mar 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Avi Alkalay: Uniqlo T-Shirt Bash Script Easter Egg from Fedora People
Offline 23 hours a day from Derek Sivers blog
Pluralistic: California can stop Larry Ellison from buying Warners (28 Feb 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
On Alliances from Smashing Frames
Acting ethically in an imperfect world from Smashing Frames
Diffusion of Responsibility from Smashing Frames

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Changes in the system prompt between Claude Opus 4.6 and 4.7

Anthropic are the only major AI lab to publish the system prompts for their user-facing chat systems. Their system prompt archive now dates all the way back to Claude 3 in July 2024 and it's always interesting to see how the system prompt evolves as they p...

via Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries April 18, 2026

You Can Message Me From My Website Now

I came across a rather interesting idea (via Intial Charge): I added a widget to every page here that lets anyone in the world immediately send me a notification. Type a message, hit send, and it’ll...

via Chris Hannah April 18, 2026

Rhea Finance exploited for $18.4 million, some recovered

Rhea Finance's lending product was exploited for around $18.4 million after an attacker took advantage of a bug in the platform's slippage protection feature. The stolen assets affected both platform and user funds.Some of the stolen tokens were returned b...

via Web3 is Going Just Great April 18, 2026

Generated by openring