Submitted by Beckam4434 t3_11qaudr in baltimore
I've seen some posts in here about the Amtrak to Philly & how absurd the pricing is if you don't buy it well in advance. I need to go to a place like 10 blocks from the train station in Philly on Friday but round trip I'm looking at like 150 unless I spend from 7am to late evening there.
Any chance tickets get cheaper right before the departure time once they see they wont be filled? or am I driving lol
genius lol. idk why I didn't think of that.
Well maybe this can turn into an Amtrak hate thread due to how absurd it is to get a train to a nearby major city
Just take the bus to Philly. Short trip and very inexpensive.
It's more complicated but I'm pretty sure they added like a $2 bus in Cecil County that takes you from the Perryville MARC stop to the last SEPTA stop in Newark. So you can stick on both regional lines and get to Philly (with a bit more work) for like $20. You could also bus the whole way to Philly.
We basically already had that yesterday. https://www.reddit.com/r/baltimore/comments/11pfxli/going_to_nyc_1xweek/
Amtrak is the easiest option, but if cheap is what matters look at taking a bus.
Take a Greyhound bus. It’s cheaper. Use it to go to NYC all the time. Unless you have you heart set on taking the train, then idk. 😬
Having done this trip via Amtrak dozens of times, I can tell you it doesn't get cheaper as you approach the date. Last Sunday I had an 1130 pm train back down here from Philly and was checking different train times that were only like 70% full leading up to departure and the price never budged.
Don’t hate Amtrak, hate the lack of federal subsidies or rather how much airlines and roads get
I don’t think it has run since Covid
We took megabus to Philly the other weekend for 20 bucks- that’s the way to go!
Yeah. I don’t hate the trains. I hate the car manufacturers for not letting trains be better
I will rather walk
You have to book a few weeks out with Amtrak to get a low price. They use this weird bucket system to determine the price. Id wish they would switch the corridor trains over to a fix price depending on the distance traveled like they do in NC or Cali Amtrak...
Do you recommend greyhound or another bus service?
Amtrak is dirt cheap if you plan more than a month in advance. Once trains start to fill up, the prices skyrocket and it is really expensive.
I've used all of them. It comes down to the most convenient pickup spot to you.
No they don’t get cheaper right before
The way Amtrak sales work is they sell the tickets in “buckets” starting with the cheapest price and after a certain amount are sold, they start selling the next “bucket” at a higher price, continually going up in price as more tickets are sold. Once the price goes up into the next bucket, it pretty much never comes back down.
So the longer you wait, the higher the price will be 99 times out of 100.
We’re lucky to live in the region where Amtrak has its absolute hands down best service, but this practice does really make it hard to use them for a last-minute trip.
Bingo. I did this same trip OP is planning last summer for like $30 round trip, but bought the tickets a month or two ahead of time.
You really cannot beat that price, driving you’d pay more for gas and parking. You might find a cheaper bus but the experience will be way worse.
My wife and I did DC to NYC for $124 round trip, two people. If we drove to NYC, that would be more than parking alone, let alone the $50 in tolls and then gas on top of that. And the train is cheaper and less stressful.
In my experience, the cheapest tix are at the asscrack of dawn or 12am - 1PM returning, unfortunately! If you don’t want to stay there for your whole day, driving might be easier if you can find free parking.
karmagirl314 t1_jc2537q wrote
Take a look at the prices for your trip but put in today’s date. That should give you an idea of their last minute pricing.