I finally got to this piece this morning. Likely the most significant revelation within was an off topic aside stating that Amtrak is not trying to market its Northeast services to the "do it on the cheap" segment:
quote:In his recent treatise on this subject (its title regrettably unprintable here), the philosopher Aaron James posits that people with this personality type are so infuriating — even when the inconvenience they cause us is negligible — because they refuse to recognize the moral reality of those around them. (James’s thesis that this obliviousness correlates to a sense of special entitlement is corroborated by my own observation that the crowd on Amtrak, where airline-level fares act as a de facto class barrier, is generally louder and more inconsiderate than the supposed riffraff on the bus.) It’s a pathology that seems increasingly common, I suspect in part because people now spend so much time in the solipsist’s paradise of the Internet that they carry its illusion of invisible (and inaudible) omniscience back with them out into the real world.
While hardly news to those here, take someone residing in, say, Phoenix where likely The Times has a circulation base (also remembering that it's Sunday circulation is almost double that of Weekdays) but to whom Amtrak is "something that goes twenty five miles South of here couple of times a week and at an odd hour", and to read what anyone in the Northeast knows that it is the dominant commercial transportation through the region.
Posted by sojourner (Member # 3134) on :
The article did not say to whom Amtrak was marketing; it just gave the writer's opinion about it. But the writer seemed to be talking mainly about ACELAs, no? In fact, there are quiet cars on both the ACELAs and the regular NE Regional trains; and the latter is marketed to less wealthy travelers (in fact, there have even been many specials lately to make the trains even more palatable to less affluent passengers).
Speaking as someone who actually lives in the East and rides Amtrak trains there, often in Quiet Cars, I must that I have never encountered any of the "policing" troubles the article speaks about. But I do not usually ride in ACELA Quiet cars--except on rare occasions, I take the Regionals.
I personally think the Quiet car is a great thing. I am not looking for the silence of a monastery, but I am also not interested in hearing people's personal conversations about their wheeler deals in business or visits to the gynecologist,nor do I want to listen to crying babies for hours if I can help it.
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
This is quite off topic (did that ever stop us?) but GBN's remark about the Times circulation reminded me that I had long forgotten what it was, so I went and looked.
Average TOTAL daily circulation: 1,613,865
of which
DIGITAL circulation is 896,000. (The Times' print circulation has fallen to 717,500.)
Now where is this digital circulation located? All over the map from hither to yon, including South America, Europe, Africa and Asia.
The times, they have a-changed. Pun intended.
Posted by Judy McFarland (Member # 4435) on :
There is supposed to be a quiet car on the MilwUkee-Chicago Hiawatha, but it 's remarkably inconvenient since it's always the last car & therefore changes with each departure. And usually you have to go to through 2-3 cars to get to it because only a few doors in the middle are manned. I'm not looking forward to Wednesday's trip to Chicago before boarding the LSL. I'm sure CUS will be a mad house & I wonder why I subjected myself to traveling that day. And I get to do it again on Sunday. Thanks goodness for the Metropolitan Lounge.