The new Amtrak trains are only 10 mph faster, and 11 years behind schedule. Don’t blame Trump – or Biden.

Photo above - great moments in railway history: Burt Lancaster and Jeanne Moreau prevent the Nazis from looting the Louvre and sending everything back to Hitler.

Okay . . . I admit that $180 for a (one way) ticket on the current Amtrak Acela might SOUND expensive, just to travel between NYC and DC. (3 million passengers last year, $530 million in ticket sales). Especially since you can score a one-way airfare ticket for as low as $49. However, most tickets are over $100. And you still have to get to and from the airport, which is arguably going to be a more expensive pain in the a$$ in NYC than in DC.

Okay – that was the OLD Amtrak Acela. The new “NextGen Acela” made its debut this week. Look at all that you get:

1 – the top speed is 10 mph faster, on track sections that are safe enough to allow it.

2 – free Wi-Fi

Don’t rush me. I’m still checking to see if there any other new features. Well, they can haul 20% more passengers. But since the Current-Gen Acela trains are never full, the benefit of more passengers is open to debate.

How much will that free Wi-Fi and extra 10 mph cost Mr or Mz commuter? Hang on . . . a one way ticket (NY to DC) is now $498. Which will HAVE to come down, right? Unless most passengers are Investment Bankers, US senators, house members, agency bureaucrats and congressional staffers. They won’t actually notice the price increase, or balk at it. And people wonder why America has a $37 trillion national debt.

The new NextGen Acela ‘lectric locomotives cost about $100 million each. $2.4 billion for 27 of them. Only 5 are in service as of today. This might be a good start, since NextGen planning began in 2014 – 11 years ago. California has been working on its high speed rail plan for 20 years, and has zero operational locomotives or track yet. California's whole system will cost $130 billion – nearly 50 times as much as Amtrak’s upgrade. But it’s unlikely to ever be completed since Trump told Governor Newsom that California had to pay for that boondoggle itself, and no more taxpayer money would be coming from DC.

Why are these NextGen Acela locomotives do darned expensive? Well, they are 95% made in the USA and designed by a French company called ALSTOM. Okay, people are jeering already. They’re thinking Citroen and Renault. That's unfair. France makes perfectly serviceable Mirage Jet Fighters. Evidently neither GE nor the other 9 American locomotive manufacturers succeeded in being the low cost bidder for the new 27 Acela trains. Welcome aboard, ALSTOM!

The French people have a saying: “Nous sommes nos choix.” (We are our choices.) America just chose French locomotives at $100 million each for an Amtrak system that lost $700 million last year and has never broken even.

“We are our choices”.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Amtrak is debuting its NextGen Acela. Here's what you need to know