After reading this thread, I decided to preform a little experiment involving my Dad and Amtrak business travel.
For context, we live in Northern Virginia but my Dad works in either North Carolina or Georgia depending on the week. He's has been making this NOVA-Charlotte-Atlanta run twice a week for over two years now, and is quite sick of all the driving. On a whim he asked me to look into Amtrak for him, taking me along for a nice Father-Son train trip of course.
I decided to book a round trip journey for two people between Washington D.C. and Atlanta. We would depart Monday August 9th and return Friday August 13th. The WAS-ATL trip was actually quite coinvent time-wise, leaving Washington D.C. at 6:30pm and arriving in Atlanta at 8:43am. Even factoring in the inevitable delays, it would put us in Atlanta nearly half a day before we actually had to be there.
The ATL-WAS trip was a bit more iffy. We would leave at 11:29pm and arrive at 1:45pm. It's nowhere near as convenient was the WAS-ATL trip. Upon telling my Dad this, he said that the ATL-WAS trip "wasn't that big of a deal" for him. I was quite surprised, but then I realized my Dad is used to traveling 9-10 hours twice each week, often staying in a hotel overnight halfway though the journey. Amtrak probably seemed like a dream to him.
The big sticking point was price. For a single roomette for the both of us it was $940 for the WAS-ATL trip and $645 for the ATL-WAS trip. $1585 in total, which is a bit too pricey for my Dad's taste. Next week he has to be in Atlanta and would prefer to fly. Perhaps I could pitch in some money and convince him to take Amtrak just to see how it fares. If so I will certainly be reporting it here.
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