Amtrak ticket prices reddit Tickets starting June 1 now range from $1000-$1600, the prices vary wildly from day to day. That being said realistically the prices for a sleeper are never going to be competitive with airlines for long trips. Amtrak pricing isn't "dynamic" in the same sense as airline pricing, though; prices only go up as you get closer to the departure date. Prices are quite high right now (Acela: $190/$342 for business/first class; $55/$112 for coach/business for NE regional). We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. It may seem like price gouging for in demand trains but this also subsidizes off peak trains. I assumed that Amtrak increased its fare based on the number of tickets remaining. The closer you get to your day of travel, the higher the price will be up until the point that the segment is sold out. Amtrak prices don't fluctuate like airlines do. I took the Amtrak for the first time last week and it was only $15 from NJ to Baltimore, I bought it 3 hrs before the ride at the station. Get the Reddit app Scan this QR code to download the app now r/Amtrak is for anything Amtrak related. It's more like "tiered" pricing; e. I have a trip coming up. Yeah as I said, I tried that and Amtrak basically won't allow that particular "hack. It's a great idea (seriously, juggling around a dozen different train times, dates, and prices in your head to try and find the optimal combination can be a headache), and for being a personal passion project, I think the presentation is fantastic as well. As tickets sold, prices would go up. In general, Amtrak tickets are cheaper when you book them way in advance due to price buckets. It's in your best interest to book in advance. 50 tickets on Amtrak to EWR enough to know that someone at Amtrak’s not done the math on this If your bid is high enough, you get the upgrade and you pay the amount of your bid (in addition to the ticket price you already paid). The extra price of Amtrak is worth it just for Penn station. can still take advantage of it. That “change fee” isn’t even a fee, it’s just the fare difference. I was hoping for a price drop with the return to daily service, but it looks like it's the opposite. Search ticket prices and book or change your reservation here. The prices are very high for Roomettes. Jul 14, 2014 · Amtrak generally has around 4 to 5 bucket price levels. It appears despite most of the trains on your chosen days of travel having sold very few tickets, all of the saver and value fares are already sold out which doesn’t make sense. Hi there! I live in British Columbia, Canada, and I am heading to Minneapolis for a concert in April. How does one find the cheapest fare on Amtrak. right now if i look for an empire builder roomette from chi -> sea anytime in the fall, the minimum price seems to be $1074 (even for a 0% full train), but if i (completely randomly) look on march 14, for instance, the same trip is $527, or on april 18 the same trip is $767. 25 hours by car 3. This is absolutely fantastic, if I had any kind of reliable income I would try and support this project somehow. No $33 tickets to be found. The trip is on 11/8, should I keep checking for a price drop? Just not familiar with the patterns and such. So it's typically best to buy early when prices are cheap. But a "round trip" (2 tickets - one there and one back), or two tickets with the same arrangement, does reserve your place on the train for each of the two tickets (there and back). There's even internet during the 45 minutes. Whereas in the U. prices can drop up to the departure time. Welcome to the wonderful exciting world of demand pricing, where the last half dozen seats fetch a serious premium. In other words. I'm curious if anyone has any similar system/ informal price tracking that they follow- would love to hear other people's take on it. In Europe tickets are typically checked randomly but not on every train. The rule of thumb when booking with Amtrak is to book 2–3 weeks out for corridor routes , 2–3 months for long distance routes. I got NYP to WAS fora trip in May for $22. I understand that Amtrak costs have to be higher due to Congressional mandates to have the service be self-profitable and still run some deeply unprofitable routes, but even with the higher prices, why can't the prices between two city pairs be constant no matter when the train leaves or especially no matter how far in advance the tickets were Jan 7, 2020 · I'm trying to figure out how Amtrak's fares work and determine how quickly they typically sell out of tickets on a particular route. I bought tickets a few weeks ago but ticket prices have gone down for the train. Why have Amtrak prices between NY and Boston so high all of a sudden? Ticket price range from $25 to $200 Amtrak Fares on the Northeast are a scam. Whatever you're seeing now is the cheapest you will get. So what you are experiencing is very much on purpose because they specifically do not allow you to see travel information unless its through an Amtrak agent. So for example, there will be 15 tickets for $10. We are… it seems like sleeper prices can definitely drop as the date gets closer, presumably if they're not selling well. People who want to drive are going to drive anyway, even if the train were free. Do prices tend to go down last minute? I’m curious as right now it’s showing me that it’s $105. That's been true for many years. It's consistently been $127, then one day it was around $100, and now it's at $159. If booked early enough, I can usually find one-way fare for $35 (used to be $30). I was told that you should book in advance for cheap prices, but I am noticing that the price is almost cut in half if I want to travel the very next day. Amtrak currently has an equipment shortage so they are running on reduced capacity along many routes that should start ease later this year and thus the prices should drop. A few days later the Acela drops to $80 and then bounces back to the original price. Once that bucket is empty (as in, all the tickets at that price have been bought), they change the fare to the next bucket (typically higher, though as u/Flamingo33316 correctly pointed out, occasionally they do go lower if ticket sales are below expectations, or if a bucket never completely empties). I have been watching ticket prices online for Amtrak Zephyr from CA to IL. Airline pricing is entirely based on supply and demand. I ride the Lake Shore Limited monthly, and for the last year and a half, the round-trip ticket was always $700. There are so many shitty busses that do this route. If the train is going at a current rate of $100 and someone with an $80 ticket cancels. This was also true for holiday travel: as long as you booked early enough you could find those $35 tickets. If you book a Roomette at a very high price, you should monitor the price as the months go on. I checked multiple months and multiple days of the week. Booking amtrak to PHL instead of DCA-PHL plane ticket saved me $300. I’m thinking about getting business class seats (this may be the only time I’ll ride the train in the near future as I’m from out of state). . This is correct and is entirely reasonable. Regardless of fare class all tickets are fully refundable for 24 hours. " It increased the price on me to make up for the lessened amount. com though, it seems that coach ticket prices and roomette prices are just loosely correlated. Meanwhile the Acelas at the same time were around $150-200. For sleeping accommodations it seems like a mixed bag. There's no way Amtrak is making money on that $10 midnight ticket but a student who doesn't mind staying up till 2:00 a. I bought a ticket on a NER from DC to NYC for next week back in December, when they made a sale that made the price drop from $99 to $72. It's a "proof of payment" system meaning you can get a fine of many times the ticket price, if found to be travelling without a ticket. you can still just buy a ticket on the spot and you won't have a fine. Amtrak on the other hand has a complete monopoly that is backstopped by government subsidies so it has little incentive to deviate from a simple first-come-first 12 votes, 16 comments. I just did a quick search using Harrisburg, PA to Manhattan. It assures that if you need a ticket, there's one that works for you. That's what I've been doing for trips along the Northeast Corridor because fares get way out of hand once the train gets past like 30% full, which is ridiculous. No matter what, the price was the same unless I would only buy one actual ticket. So lowering prices would get a small number of extra passengers, but the lower ticket price would mean lower revenue in total. But this isn't ideal. S. is there a way to change them and get the… We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. The $80 ticket will be available for purchase. But neither of those are true, so Amtrak is kind of a joke, you just pay more to lose time. Well, I was online today looking at future ticket prices and I couldn’t find anything for less than $47. it’s a racket. Then the Amtrak site got a redesign and there was no practical way to get the info. The price they paid goes back into inventory for purchase. We would like to book a trip from San Francisco to Denver one way with a roomette (for 2) - between July 15 to July 30. If you know when you are returning, I would buy both tickets at the same time to avoid surprises upon your date of return. If I book Value five weeks out, and two weeks before my trip I realize I need to take an 8PM train instead of a 6PM train, now I'm eating a loss on my first ticket plus paying much higher prices for the second ticket because I'm no longer booking early. r/Amtrak is for anything Amtrak related. So it could be that you're the last passenger in Bucket 5 and he's the first passenger in Bucket 6, or something like that. The author wrote code that then sent queries to the Amtrak site for each of those days and he'd scrape the text information the Amtrak site generated to get prices for each seat, class and room type. The state-supported routes like the Pacific Surfliner, Capitol Corridor, and San Joaquins in California are subsidized by the state, and my observation is that every ticket for a certain route is the same price on any given day, with logical rules like traveling to the next station increases your ticket price by $2 or $4. Now you want Ticket B, so Amtrak is letting you use the money that you already paid for the new ticket. Even coach tickets are often more expensive than flying for cross country trips. Amtrak ticket prices vary heavily depending on how far in advance you book and what train it is. I was thinking about buying a 10 segment rail pass (price 500 USD) and travel from Seattle to Minneapolis with the Amtrak Empire Builder, making some stops on the way. How do you guys get good deals on Amtrak? If you see the price drop the same day you bought it you can cancel the first ticket and buy a new ticket at the cheaper price. It should be also noted as people do cancel thier tickets. The last train I booked was in February for that price. Look at the little train icon in the reservation screen, if you're checking a "cheap" reservation and the icon shows more than 80% full, that price won't be there when you get back. I took a family trip from Southern California to Omaha with my parent in 1993. The ticket prices fluctuate daily. Example: You pay $40 for a Coach ticket. The only price change that happens is that the prices often increase as you get closer to the departure date. 22 votes, 19 comments. So where you're going to find the most value using Amtrak is getting from small and midsized cities with limited or no airservice to the big cities. I booked an ALX-PHL amtrak ticket at same time I booked my overseas plane tickets - well in advance of the trip. If they decrease the price after you already bought, you can call 1-800-USA-RAIL and they will give a refund of the difference. I tried it again this morning on a different computer to no avail. 38K subscribers in the Amtrak community. My ticket was 72 but the tickets are now 36. News, photos, questions, and more. Enjoy the comfort and convenience of Amtrak. I looked up ticket It wouldn’t hurt to call Amtrak and talk to a rep about the high ticket prices to find out if it’s an issue with the system. Amtrak ticket prices are by bins. Reply reply Reserving early is always the best way to get the best prices in my experience. We are not associated with Amtrak in any way, official inquiries should be referred to Amtrak. I’ve always been told “take Amtrak, it’s awesome!” But wow, I didn’t expect the prices to be so high (typically $81-114 for coach one way). Now it's all of a sudden telling me it'll be $40 one way did Amtrak all of a sudden jack the prices up or something? Amtrak's dynamic pricing system is very different from airlines - generally prices only go up unless people cancel their tickets (Amtrak uses pricing buckets where a certain number of seats are set aside at each price point, and as each bucket sells out the next bucket of seats sets the list price. They’re probably losing money on that one, but I’ve seen sub-$8. Amtrak ticket was $18. Has there been a significant price increase in the past month?? First time taking Amtrak and I've noticed some changes in prices when I've checked. Amtrak is for people nostalgic about the 1950s, OR for business travelers whose companies pay for Acela (which does have working internet) Can confirm the early booking = low price strategy. Recently (past couple of days) ticket prices have gone waaaay up for my usual ticket and haven't followed the usual (informal, unresearched) pricing fluctuations. i’ve seen ticket prices for NEC RI to NYC down $40 from what i paid standing on the platform waiting for the “80% full” train that is more like 40%. Typically they might decrease five months before your travel date, but you never know. city bus, subway) . For example, in my current home of North Carolina, the price of tickets between any two stations on a state-supported route is a standard price that does not change aside from the occasional promotional sale. Even if you book greyhound and can wait indoors at the port authority, a ticket for a specific bus doesn’t even guarantee a seat. once those 15 sell then the next batch of 15 will be for $20. Now they're 120 one-way? And… Amtrak prices tickets by buckets, so if you wait too long (noting that "too long" is very early for the Sunday after Thanksgiving since it's the #1 travel day in the US AFAIK, slightly less but still so that Friday) the cheaper buckets are gone. Nope — Amtrak offers NWK-EWR for as low as $5 for a ticket that includes the AirTrain. Looking at prices on amtrak. I checked prices today for a friend that's coming along on the trip and hasn't gotten their tickets yet and they've gotten cheaper. Once they sell the next batch of 15 will be $25 and so on. Amtrak's demand is relatively inelastic, meaning that lowering prices won't get more people on board. g. Get app Get the Reddit app Log In Log in to Reddit. This means I often have to take the bus to DC, which isn’t the most comfortable mode of travel but it’s cheap ($35 ish one way). Amtrak prices were $45-61 one way. Twice this week I've bought tickets, waiting on the cart payment screen for ~10-15 minutes while I confirm details with family, and then had the price magically increase after I click to pay. m. Rinse and repeat. I know prices change all the time, lower-class buckets fill up, etc. I like to take the train to visit friends and family, but often don't plan far enough ahead and the train tickets end up either selling out or being too expensive Damn, the secret is out lol. So I used to buy an amtrak ticket for $7-$12 sometimes $20 to get from Baltimore to Aberdeen. I was just noticing that as well. How reasonable would it be to contact Amtrak about this? A few days back I bought a ticket for a trip because there were "2 left at this price". Since Ticket B costs more than you paid for Ticket A, you pay the difference. If you booked a week or more out and took a northeast regional (same route as Acela but a little slower) you could probably get a 20 to 30 dollars fare. Amtrak switched to an on demand pricing a lot like the airliners do so on busy days like the weekend where people travel the tickets tend to be more expensive unless you're picking a red-eye train. Pricing models for state-supported routes depend on the agreement between Amtrak and the state supporting the route. So no one makes it easy for you to find a ticket, YOU HAVE to let them price gouge you if you want to take an Amtrak. Usually within two weeks I find the best price, I have always booked within a week though. Do not rely on this to happen you wait for a lower fare. I live in Boston, and last semester tickets to NYC were about 30 dollars each way (I think). Aside from that, some of the best values I have seen are purchases using Amtrak points earned with their credit card. Recently flew out of Philly with family on trip to Europe. For example, I saw these prices for the date I'm looking to travel: In the search results for one traveler, the roomette charge was ~$1141 and the coach fare $251. You paid for Ticket A. Time is competitive, 3. Booking early is the best. As the train fills up, prices increase and thus fares (almost) always rise as you get closer to the departure date. Don’t make it a commuter-rail only trip (it’ll take too long), but consider, say, NJT to NYC and Amtrak beyond, or some other combination of commuter rail and Amtrak and you’ll typically beat Amtrak’s pricing spread on pricey tickets As far as I can tell, Amtrak's pricing is somewhat based on cost (price goes up by distance traveled & number of mealtimes, if in a roomette) but the bigger factor in Amtrak prices is supply and demand (price goes up as the train fills up). Flights are about 10 times better combining price and experience. Consider just riding the northeast regional it's a cheaper ticket and it's just going to get you there about 30 minutes later. Amtrak works on system that raises the price as the train fills up more, so booking in advanced and checking multiple dates allows you to find best price. Amtrak is 10x easier than air travel but one of Ex: the first 10% of passengers pay $5 per ticket, the next 10% of passengers pay $10 per ticket, and so on. 75 by train. , x tickets are sold at base fare for each train, then y tickets are sold at elevated fare #1, z tickets then sold at elevated fare #2 (> #1), etc. First, keep in mind that booking Amtrak trains in the US is like booking an airline ticket and not like riding public transportation (e. of Plane tickets are backed by sophisticated yield management algorithms that update by the minute and airlines will cut prices aggressively to grab market share and fill up planes. qsx btjrhkwd gwtur ctb vdpyjp qoo uaom awcwo cnmo sgvgmd