Amtrak Acela ride from New York to Boston

Amtrak is spending $2.5 billion of your tax dollars on “NextGen” Acela train sets. Here’s a report on an August 2025 trip via OldGen Acela.

My $275 first class ticket from New York to Boston entitled me to use the Metropolitan Lounge at New York’s Penn Station, now named after Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a liberal in his time and a reactionary conservative by the standards of today’s Democratic Party. In his 1965 report, for example, he seems to be engaging in victim-blaming:

The percent of nonwhite families headed by a female is more than double the percent for whites. Fatherless nonwhite families increased by a sixth between 1950 and 1960, but held constant for white families. It has been estimated that only a minority of Negro children reach the age of 18 having lived all their lives with both of their parents. …The Breakdown of the Negro Family Has Led to a Startling Increase in Welfare Dependency.

(Little did he imagine that white Americans would be incented to catch up to their Black brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters by the Family Support Act of 1988, which required states to set up child support formulae such that family court lawsuits would have a guaranteed minimum profit.)

Here’s the view from the lounge’s balcony:

The interior of the lounge, which offers free sandwiches, salads, chips, non-alcoholic drinks, etc.:

Due to the lack of crowding and the friendliness of the employees, this lounge is 20X nicer than what the airline lounges have become. Working WiFi was provided for those who want to sit with their laptops.

Separately, the lounge has a good view of the main hall’s video wall in which the New York City government promises to hire, and then retain forever (“strong labor protections”), anyone fired by the federal government for laziness and/or incompetence:

My initial Facebook post about the trip:

Just leaving Penn Station on time via Acela. Great crew on AMTRAK. The train itself bucks and bumps so much that they should have announcements in Mandarin to reassure our Chinese brothers and sisters that a derailment isn’t imminent (high-speed rail in China is perfectly smooth even above 200 mph). Maybe the idea is that everyone will be too plastered to notice?

The food in the lounge, though simpler, was generally superior.

Some hard-working guys:

My follow-up comments to the Facebook post, not in quote style for readability…

Cars and trucks were blowing past us on I-95, but now I think we’re matching their speed.

We’re in the middle of a one-hour run to New Haven. The iPhone reports a blistering speed.

we’ve cut back to a speed where we won’t have to adjust our watches for time dilation under Mileva Marić’s theory of special relativity (popularized by her husband).

Wifi doesn’t work. AMTRAK needs to adopt Starlink! [The new $2.5 billion cars won’t have Starlink, but “5G” (same idea as what the old cars have and that didn’t work for my trip.]

Our AI overlords have access to data showing that I’m on a train track and moving at 30-60 mph. Also it is time to point out that an AirTag is moving with me on the same track. Maybe this would be a useful warning for someone who owned a private rail car attached to the back of an AMTRAK train?

Approaching Westerly, CT at left lane pickup truck speed on I-95 in South Florida.

15 minutes before Providence we hit 150 mph:

Arrived on time at South Station, just under four hours after leaving Penn Station. Perfect no-waiting connection to the Red Line. Got to the Harvard Square apartment at almost exactly the same as Google Maps had predicted for leaving Penn Station at 6:30 pm by car.