Thursday, January 14, 2010

Amtrak putting free Wi-Fi on Northeast trains; others have to wait |

Amtrak is finally getting an upgrade, but it’s not high-speed rail. (If you’ve been to Europe or Asia, you’ll know that Acela is NOT high-speed).

But Amtrak will be getting slightly more technologically savvy (and bearable) with the addition of free Wi-Fi to those Acela trains. So far, that means only trains on the Northeast corridor (New York, Washington and Boston, specifically). No word on when that will be available anywhere else, where Amtrak trains are old and slow as beasts.

If Amtrak seriously thinks that the inclusion of free Wi-Fi is enough to make people pay for an overpriced train ride that isn’t really that much faster, then they’re really in more trouble than we all know. (Three hours from NY to Boston? 30 minutes shorter than a regular train? Bolt Bus only takes four sometimes.)

Wi-Fi should really be implemented on those long-haul rides, like the ones that go across country or up and down the West Coast, because those are truly painful journeys that I’ve even experienced first-hand.

Still, I guess it’s a start. Now just get me from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two to three hours (with or without Wi-Fi), and I’ll be happy.

Rachel KingRachel started playing with her mother's old Brownie camera when she was just a toddler, working her way up from a Hello Kitty point-and-shoot to training on both film and digital SLRs. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.

No comments: