It’s been a good year for Amtrak, or anyone who likes rail travel and would like to see the U.S. gain a little on Europe, Japan and China with their futuristic (to us) high-speed trains. We could be looking at the dawn of a new Golden Age of Rail Travel.
If you have ridden trains in any of those countries with advanced systems, you have an idea of how good they can get. America’s trains have lagged behind, but things are changing. If you haven’t ridden a train in the US for a while, it’s worthy of consideration. It’s a great way to travel.
Especially now, when there’s a train guy in the White House. President Biden is famously big on trains. He earned the nickname “Amtrak Joe” when he rode the trains on his commute between Delaware and Washington D.C. during his 40 years in Congress.
Amtrak was created in 1970 when President Richard Nixon signed the Rail Passenger Service Act.
President Biden is well known to be a big supporter of trains. Maybe it’s because he’s old-fashioned, but sometimes old is new again. One of his perennial campaign promises has been to invest in America’s rail system. So it’s not surprising that rail got a good chunk of investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Early this month Amtrak announced it had been awarded federal funds for 12 projects totaling $10 billion to modernize the Northeast Corridor. It will be used to replace aging tunnels, bridges and tracks, to improve safety and reliability, upgrade travel speeds and expand capacities from Washington D.C. to Boston, America’s busiest rail travel region.
This is only part of the funding for train development. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes $102 billion in total rail funding, including $66 billion from advanced appropriations, and $36 billion in authorized funding. It’s a good time for trains.
Work is also being done to expand and upgrade trains surrounding Chicago, on routes to Milwaukee, Indianapolis, St. Paul and Detroit. Upgrades are taking place in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, California, Colorado and Washington State.
Whatever you may feel about the politics of it, it’s good business sense to align yourself advantageously with the changes. There’s a great opportunity in rail travel.
Rail Vacations
One Amtrak partner that will benefit indirectly, but hugely, from the infrastructure improvements is Amtrak Vacations. It’s the company that creates branded travel packages based on Amtrak transportation. Amtrak Vacations has been on a roll since 2012 when Frank Marini was appointed president of Yankee Leisure Group, the parent of three brands: Railbookers, Yankee Holidays and Amtrak Vacations. In recent years, recognizing the boom in train travel, Yankee Leisure Group re-branded as Railbookers Group.
Yankee Holidays was founded in 1972 by Bob Depaolo, a former airline employee who saw the potential of vacation packaging from inside the airline industry and knew how to put the components together. The company built an exclusive niche for itself as an expert on vacation packages for U.S. cities. Yankee Leisure Group launched Amtrak Vacations in 2006, in partnership with Amtrak, as a private label rail-based vacation package product. It started with packages for New York and Boston and grew from there. Today the packages are available for almost every major city. It is now practical, economical and fun to tour the U.S. by train.
After Marini took over as president in 2012, the company charged through eight years of annual double-digit growth, until COVID. Because Amtrak was considered an essential service, it never closed, even during the lockdown period. Domestic travel by train was one of the few possibilities during COVID times. Many who still wanted to travel went via Amtrak. So while Amtrak Vacations’ business fell about 30 or 40 percent, it was a minor drop compared to most businesses at the time.
The company owes much of its success to its close partnership with travel advisors. It builds its product line in response to requests from its market. “Our customers are our product department,” Marini told me. “We look at what we customize weekly for our travel agents and customers and study the pattern. From there we create independent rail packages that are priced every day the train runs for two years ahead of time. They can be customized to a client’s suggestions. The key for us is always paying close attention to the customer, what they ask for, what we customize for them, what they ask on our webinars, what they book, etc. The customer is our CEO and we listen to them intently and consistently, as they drive all our corporate strategic decisions.”
Train Rebirth
In the mid-20th century rail infrastructure got pushed aside in America in favor of developing highways for cars, and airports for air travel. Meanwhile, Europe, Japan and China moved ahead, developing amazing modern rail transportation, with high-speed trains that travel up to 155 miles per hour. Now as things have evolved, with highways often overcrowded and jammed, and airports hectic and stressful, rail offers opportunities that can be seen differently from how they were seen 75 years ago.
Rail travel is smooth. You don’t have to drive or watch the road, but you can enjoy the view as the countryside rolls by. When you reach your destination, you are in the city center. You don’t have to set up a separate trip into the city, as you do from most airports. Amtrak’s new trains have wifi, so you can set up your office and be connected as you travel across the country.
Allianz Travel insurance company put together a list of five major city pairs for which air travel offers no time advantage at all, including New York-Boston, New York-Washington DC, Los Angeles-San Diego, Seattle-Portland and Tampa-Miami. But time is only one factor. I think the stress factor of airlines severely tips the balance in the direction of trains, for the overall pleasure of the travel experience.
Unless your destination is at least a few hundred miles away, there’s no time advantage to flying at all, once you include airport time. You are traveling across the countryside, in it, not flying over it. You’ve traded the tense, crowded, hazardous experience of a flight on a mega jet, for the smooth, cozy pleasure of a train ride.
I spoke to Jim Marini, Frank’s brother and the senior vice president of sales for Amtrak Vacations for 10 years running. Talking to him turned up my enthusiasm for train travel a couple of notches. We went through quite a litany of reasons to love train travel.
“Here’s the best part,” he told me. “For travel advisors, you can call us today, book today and, if you want, travel today. Or you can make a booking for any time in the next two years.
“Travel advisors work so hard,” he said. “If they were to try to book an independent FIT vacation in the U.S., they would probably have to visit four different websites, and spend hours. We can do instant quotes. It’s all totally customizable. We can book practically everything except flights.”
Here are some of the most popular packages, all of which can be customized in practically every aspect.
- Glacier National Park Getaway – https://www.amtrakvacations.com/trips/glacier-national-park-getaway
- Northern Rail Experience – https://www.amtrakvacations.com/trips/northern-rail-experience
- Grand Canyon Getaway – https://www.amtrakvacations.com/trips/grand-canyon-getaway
- Grand National Parks – https://www.amtrakvacations.com/trips/grand-national-parks-with-yellowstone-yosemite-and-the-grand-canyon
- New Orleans Ultimate Getaway – https://www.amtrakvacations.com/trips/new-orleans-ultimate-getaway
For more information, call 800-268 7252 or visit https://www.amtrakvacations.com.
David Cogswell is a freelance writer working remotely, from wherever he is at the moment. Born at the dead center of the United States during the last century, he has been incessantly moving and exploring for decades. His articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fox News, Luxury Travel Magazine, Travel Weekly, Travel Market Report, Travel Agent Magazine, TravelPulse.com, Quirkycruise.com, and other publications. He is the author of four books and a contributor to several others. He was last seen somewhere in the Northeast US.
