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Transit Adventures

Happy New Year (With this website down due to an influx of spammers) and 2013 Train Travel in Review

This post was supposed to go live yesterday (the last day of 2013) but mostly Chinese (I know from looking up stats of their origins) spammers had other ideas and my webhost suspended my website for using too many resources. Over the past month or so the amount of Spam from comments on this blog started mounting hugely, nearly all caught my Akismet (thousands a day, crashing Chrome when I tried to delete them). Last night my webhost took the SubwayNut down (for maintenance as the hompage said) for violating my terms of service with excessive CPU usage. I believe the issue is Spammers trying to  and have disabled commenting (which was used so little on this blog I don’t think its much of a loss), see the Contact Me page if you wish to comment at me.

The post I had nearly finished last night:

I have a busy holiday season and have a bunch of website stuff I’m close to finishing (long term projects) but I thought I might as well write another Year in Review Post as is so common for blogs on New Years Eve. 2012 was my big year of travel when I road nearly 15,000 miles. This year I had a mostly year-round internship so my six week trips of 2012 were basically over (except for June) I did though do a number of smaller trips, mastered the art of points runs (riding more segments), I’ve got enough AGR TQP points re-qualify for Select+. I also did my first Amtrak guest rewards points redemption.

It was through a great year for me finishing off Commuter Rail Lines in the New York City Area and Northern California , particularly finally riding every inch of New Jersey Transit (and writing up a lot of the system) except for the Atlantic City Line (and I need to get myself to West Trenton on SEPTA at some point). The only new rail lines I crossed off the “I haven’t ridden this” list were ACE – The Altamont Commuter Express and Shore Line East. I also road the CapeFlyer (operated by MBTA Commuter Rail) and the Adirondack Scenic Railway for the first time. I’m also proud of the fact I finally rode Caltrain all the way down to Gilroy (the trackage, except for the siding into the Gilroy Station isn’t new because the Coast Starlight uses the same line), getting every single station and got the Amtrak Capital Corridor up to Auburn (plus now getting every single station on the Capital Corridor and the San Joaquin)

The totals for Amtrak:

  • In total I road Amtrak for 11,221 miles (2012: 12,056 miles)
  • I took 81 Amtrak Trains and 4 Amtrak California Thruway Buses and the Arizona Shuttle Thruway Van to start my AGR reward (66 trains in 2012)
  • Only 7,628 of these miles were paid, my one reward took me  over 3,593 miles over four nights in a Roomette consuming 4 dining car breakfasts, 3 Lunches, 3 Wine Tastings, and 2 dinners (plus the cold boxed dinner leaving Portland)
  • I spent $1,471.77 on my Amtrak travel, costing me 13¢ per mile traveled (in 2012 with my longer trips I spent $1,675.60, but traveled farther and spend 13¢ per mile again)
    • Frequent Segments (Points Runs):
    • 8 trips in total (including through rides) between NWK-NYP (my new points run add-on to everything)
    • 7 Amtrak Shuttle/Vermonter trips between New Haven and Wallingford, I road the bus up on one points run to even things out
  • Only three of my Amtrak tickets had a segment over $50! (Meaning I got 2 AGR points per dollar spent, not the 100 point minimum), my 3 Acela Express Rides (2 First Class upgraded, 1 regular) have their own minimums of 750/500. These segments were: Denver to Salt Lake City, Minneapolis to Milwaukee, and Charleston to Washington (All except DEN to SLC were multi-city).
  • New trackage on Amtrak was unfortunately relatively minimal: Flagstaff to Fullerton (540 miles), Charleston to Alexandria (495 miles), Worcester, MA (from West Newton on MBTA Commuter Rail) to Albany (144 miles) and finally the Downeaster Extension from Brunswick to Portland, Maine (22 miles), including riding the now discontinued Weekend Downeaster Shuttle from Brunswick to Freeport deigned to try and get tourists to visit both towns in the same day and an Amtrak train only operating 7 miles!
  • I only road one new Amtrak Route: The Palmetto (I also took the Illinos Zephyr for the first time, but consider this train to be the same as the Carl Sandburg since they follow the same routing), at this point its not which Amtrak routes I’ve ridden, its which routes I haven’t–the Blue Water and all Atlantic Coast Routes (Crescent, Carolinian, Piedmont, Silver Star/Meteor) now except for the Palmetto.
  • I took the most segments on the Northeast Regional (12) almost entirely for points runs (except for 3) as segments between New York and Philadelphia as add-on segments to other tickets up the Hudson, second is the Keystone (11), 13 if I include a Philly to Exton points run on the Pennsylvanian. All rides were points runs (or Philly to New York segments as add-ons to other tickets)
  • The Vermonter is the only once a day train I rode the most, 4 times except all but 1 trip (New Haven to Windsor) was a points run along the Springfield Line (I took 6 rides on the Springfield Shuttle as well)
  • The Overnight Long-Distance Train I rode the most was the Lake Shore on 3 separate occasions but only for 54 (Worcester to Springfield), 251 (Springfield to Syracuse) and 96 miles (Utica to Albany)
  • I spent only 6 nights total on the train this year: 4 nights in roomettes on my AGR reward and just two in Coach

I took some photos last night taking my usual walk down to the Hudson River and through Inwood Hill Park of the final departing Lake Shore Limited on New Years Eve (where passengers celebrated the New Year between Rochester and Erie as the train was running about a half-hour late):

last_lake_shore1 last_lake_shore2 last_lake_shore3 last_lake_shore4

2014, will see me traveling even less (and hopefully mastering the slightly long-weekend trip, like my trips to Montreal and Charleston. I’m starting Hunter College’s Masters of Urban Planning program in just a few weeks! (With time for one final, big ski trip out West with some Amtrak travel too, stay tuned for that)