Tale of Two Forms of Transit

As you may remember from my earlier post, Friday evening was the first time I got to ride the Acela from Boston to New York's Penn Station. Overall, the ride was about what I expected. The train was clean and very comfortable, a bit of an upgrade over the Amtrak Regional trains I've ridden in the past. We literally flew from Boston to Providence, with houses and woods going by so fast it almost made you dizzy to look at them. After that it got dark so it was harder to tell, but we were moving disappointingly slow, especially when we had to crawl through Mystic and New London. All told the trip took the scheduled 3 hours and 37 minutes and we stepped off in the middle of the city. It was comfortable so I was able to read and get a little nap in. Here are a couple pictures of the train at South Station.

On the way back Sunday, we rode the Bolt Bus, which is a new low-cost subsidiary of Greyhound that operates in the Northeast corridor. I wanted to take this bus as an upgrade over the other low cost carriers, namely MegaBus and the Chinatown carriers. It costs about $3-5 more than these other carriers and offers wifi. More importantly, the seats were definitely more comfortable and roomy than the buses I've taken in the past. My main issue with taking the bus is that even with relatively comfortable seats I still get car sick and can't relax as well because your life is basically in the hands of a driver you may or may not want to trust with your life. Fortunately our Bolt Bus driver, aka Ving Rhames with a goatee, wasn't trying to set the land speed record from NY to Boston like some Fung Wah drivers I've ridden with. However, he was maneuvering our 60 foot bus like a sports car through Manhattan and heavy interstate traffic. Let's just say my view of all of this from directly behind the driver did not do a lot to ease my mind. In any event we left New York at 5:30 and despite the heavy traffic, made it to Boston only 15 minutes after our scheduled 9:45 arrival time.

In case you're still reading, here are some Acela fun facts I learned from Extreme Trains (I may be the only person who has ever seen this show)
- each Acela engine is called a power car and generates 6000 horsepower (compared to 4000 for an average engine)
- although capable of speeds up to 200 mph, 150 mph is the highest speed attained by the Acela and occurs in southern MA and RI
- when going around curves at speeds greater than 60 mph, the cars tilt into the curve to cancel the effects of centripetal forces
- each Acela train set costs $25 million and there are only 20 in existence