come on now piggy train!

after 3 months out of service, acela is back to plying the boston-new york route. but!!! only 1 roundtrip per day. ok, 3 round trips as of today. so sad so sad. express train from boston to dc. sounds perfect right? it's only 200 miles from boston to new york. and there are tons of people who go back and forth. even though new yorkers and bostonians are enemies to the death, there are many bostonians who have moved to new york and vice versa. so, there is no lack of traffic between the 2 cities. flying takes about 3 hours, commuting to the airports from downtown included. both train stations are in the downtown area, so no need to spend time getting there. but the so called express train is hardly that. it supposedly takes 3.5 hrs to get fr boston to new york. that works out to be ~60 mph. you can drive faster than that and still be within the speed limit. ok, a little over the speed limit. and on top of that, it's never on time. I mean the afternoon rush hour trains i.e. those than leave from 1pm to 5pm. the morning ones were usually fine.

let's look at the tgv. average 197 mph. shinkansen about the same. and also for ice. so why not the acela?

The highest speed limit for Acela Express is 150 mph (241 km/h) only on on two sections of track in Rhode Island and Massachusetts... The slowest section of the electrified NEC is the portion owned by the Connecticut and New York State Departments of Transportation between New Haven and New Rochelle. Trains here are limited to only 90 mph (145 km/h) maximum on a 4 mile stretch in New York State; between the New York State Line and New Haven maximum speeds are only 75 mph (120 km/h).

ancient tracks for one. and also their losing battle with punctuality results in these high speed trains getting stuck behind the commuter trains!! yup! they share the same tracks!! why?? probably because of severe lack of funds (because amtrak has never made a profit) and n.i.m.b.y mentality. so once they are late, which they almost always are, they become even slower if they have to tail the commuter trains that make all the local stops! never go pick up your friends at the boston stations at the expected time of arrival. especially on friday evenings. unless you're willing to drive around aimlessly until the train arrives. another reason why we won't survive without cell phones. inspite of all this, acela brings in 22% of amtrak's revenue. imagine that! this boston to dc express line brings in a quarter of their revenue. therefore, the recent breakdown must be driving them bonkers!!

so what happened? why are the brakes failing prematurely? who knows. probably because they're so freaking heavy (twice the european models) and because they have to brake so much. no wonder the builders themselves called them le cochon.