Originally Posted by
hhdl
Part of the reason for this is that, unlike the airlines (where any milk run is a rarity, let alone a 9-leg milk run), the fact that people are getting off and on means that whether there's availability from BOS-WAS depends on the seats selected for NWK-PHL.
I've been wondering about this in the context of Acela rolling this out. Consider the example of a fully sold-out train from WAS to NYP, except there are two seats available, 2A and 2B for the whole route. Then somebody buys 2A for WAS-PHL and somebody else buys 2B for PHL-NYP. So there is now 1 seat left from WAS to NYP, but it is not the same seat. Would I be able to buy a ticket from WAS to NYP? (Guessing no, given that I would have to switch seats in PHL?) If not, it is easy to imagine lots of scenarios like this where seat selections effectively "block off" tickets that would otherwise have been available prior to the use of assigned seating. This seems like a bad outcome for both Amtrak and the customer.