Amtrak considers narrower seats

In 2017, my Father and I had to go to Greece to rescue my 86 year old Grandmother who had broken her ankle while visiting family. At the time there the only direct United States-Greece flight came out of Newark, New Jersey, so we decided the first leg of our journey would be by train. (Northeast Regional from Washington D.C.) I remember it being a pleasant experience all around.

After I had gotten off the plane in Athens, I realized how wide the Amfleet seats and aisles were compared to the plane. Even in your seat, you could very comfortably stretch around. Not so on the plane.

One of the huge advantages of trains over planes is that exact ability to get up and "stretch your legs" so to speak. You are not confined to a small space for several hours on end like you are on a plane. Narrower seats would certainly hamper that ability, but not fully extinguish it.

But would narrower seats affect my decision to ride Amtrak? No. So I guess Mrs. Edna St. Vincent Millay's old adage would still ring true with me. "Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going."

That being said my Amtrak riding is few and far between. I'd imagine a regular rider would hate it. (An opinion confirmed by many of those here.) I'll be riding the Vermonter on Friday. Maybe I'll get one of those questionnaires!

Literalman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:43 pm The Amtrak post-trip survey that prompted me to ask the question beginning this thread said that Amtrak was considering using narrower seats and asked whether it would affect my choice to travel on Amtrak in the future. It didn't sound like Amtrak might offer an optional cheaper class, but rather that coach seats might become narrower. I'm scheduled for another trip at the end of the month, and if I see the question again I will try to get a screen shot at least and share it here.

Given we'd lose an estimated 2" per seat at most? Not really. As I mentioned at the first page of the thread, we'd go down from 23" to 21", while the airline seat maxes at 18".

Granted, those are estimates and I'd have to get better engineering diagrams than what's online to see how large the interior of a Viewliner I or Amfleet is side-to-side to get better figures. Still, bigger than airlines.

Watch ticket sales go up because those of a wider persuasion have to hit the business class or have two seats.

BandA wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 11:02 pm Maybe better to provide free narrower wheelchairs to handicapped passengers than to narrow the seats. How wide is the present aisle?

22"-24". You can just fit a max-sized luggage case in the isles.

Wheelchairs aren't like a pair of loaner skis... For a quadriplegic they're part of the person.

Airlines have a collapsible aisle chair that can be used to move someone into the seat or to the lavatory, but they're not a substitute for more than that.

I do find it a bit ironic that everyone loves ADA when it comes to high platforming and level boarding, but the moment it starts to inconvenience their seat width or call double deck trains into question, it's suddenly OK for the disabled to have to compromise...

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BandA wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 1:18 pm reasonable accommodation. Not unlimited accommodation.

"Reasonable accommodation" is a concept of employment law in relation to accessibility, but is not a defined concept in transportation laws covering accessibility.

I'd be concerned about a population that is both politically powerfully and increasingly needing assistive devices (i.e., the baby boomers) -- if they find they can't use Amtrak because they can't get to seats, guess which company will no longer be in business no matter how wide the seat.

Forget wheelchairs for a moment.(even though I'd say that's enough of a reason.)

Losing 2" per seat doesn't cost much. But that results in an aisle 8" wider. Consider how much easier it'll be on a crowded train to get by another person with luggage.

I think we're overreacting to what's a minor, if even noticeable change in comfort for what could be a gain in functionality.

I’m neither young nor small anymore. You take those two inches and I walk away from Amtrak. Period.

I don't know; I'm quite a big person and i could probably manage considering it's still more than most domestic flights.

I think this is getting to be more like "shoulder room" than "butt room". I can fit my butt into an 18" seat. But I will be bumping shoulders since they are 22" across the back. With Amtrak's current seats, I get an inch spare top and bottom.

I now think the question here should be why Amtrak is asking about this in the first place.

Oh, and 3+2 in a commuter setting? LIRR/MetroNorth has that info.

My understanding is that Amtrak's highest load factors are in the sleepers, not coach, so the odds of being shoulder to shoulder with narrower seats seems low to me on most routes. On the ones where density is an issue, they're short enough to be tolerable.

I'm far less worried about shoulder room than I am leg room, so bring on the slightly narrower seats as long as the seat pitch stays the same.

The new airline seats are a go. https://thepointsguy.com/news/amtrak-ne ... n-onboard/
Fair Use quote: (You can remove if it's a problem.) "The new Venture trains also get a significant downgrade when it comes to seat recline. In fact, the seats don’t recline in the traditional sense at all. Instead, the seat bottom cushion slides forward — about 2.4 inches.
While this motion doesn’t impede on your neighbor behind you, I barely felt any difference in comfort when I went to hit the recline button. While I was fairly comfortable during my one-hour ride between Chicago and Joliet, I could see these seats being a little too stiff for longer journeys, such as the five-hour passage all the way through to St. Louis.
Unfortunately, seat width also decreases from about 21 inches on the Amfleet and Horizon cars to about 19.1 inches. Since I rode the Venture and Amfleet back to back, I could absolutely notice less padding and narrower seats on the newer coaches."

I imagine the business class seats will be 21 inches wide like the Brightline "Select" seats. Reminder that these were ordered by the Illinois DOT, not Amtrak, who didn't have much say in things like seat width or recline. They are not the same seats as Brightline, may not be the same as the Ventures for CA DOT, and most likely won't be the same as the Amfleet I replacements. I do like how the seat doesn't impede on the seat behind, as that's a big problem on the Amfleets and Superliners IMO. Though no recline in the back cushion is not the answer IMO.

Now, maybe those seats would be okay if more CREATE projects were finished so it wasn't five hours Chicago-St. Louis.

Within the NEC, people choose Amtrak over flying because of the added comfort and convenience, even if it means the trip might take slightly longer (in the case of NY-BOS or DC-NY). Making the train feel more like a plane is going to decrease ridership.