Atlanta is served by one Amtrak service, the Crescent, which runs one train daily on its nearly 1400-mile route from New York to New Orleans, and another train daily from New Orleans to New York.
Amtrak Crescent is the one and only train line which connects New York to Atlanta. Furthermore, there is only one train per day, so you will have to plan your travel around this limited availability.
For shorter trips, it is definitely cheaper to take Amtrak than it is to fly. There is also a much smaller chance your Amtrak trip will be negatively impacted by bad weather.
Many of the lines don't make any money or are operated at a loss. To accommodate the money-losing routes, Amtrak uses profits from its popular lines, such as the Northeast Corridor. Since this is one of the most popular routes, Amtrak can charge higher prices and send those profits to other, less profitable lines.
Amtrak fares can vary dramatically in the Northeast, home of the most heavily used stretch of track in the railroad's nationwide network, which also includes stops in Canada. But tickets are often more expensive than plane tickets, despite flight times being much shorter than the typical train ride.
Amtrak does, in fact, offer scenic, luxury rail journeys to top locations across the U.S., especially if you are looking for some vacation deals.
Longer Trip Times It's typically faster to travel by plane than by train, especially when your destination is across the country. A three-hour flight might be two nights on a train.
In fiscal year 2022, Amtrak served 22.9 million passengers. That figure was down ten million from 2019 when 33 million people rode Amtrak, a 30% decline. By contrast, in 2022, some 736 million U.S. air passengers were screened by the TSA, as airline travel returned to near pre-pandemic levels.