Originally Posted by
jackal
Airline ticket prices are all over the place. Even tools like Farecast.com are at most educated guesses at whether prices will go up or down. Nothing's a worse feeling than buying a ticket at $300 only to see it drop to $175 three days later.
Amtrak, however, is much more predictable. There is only one direction train fares can go: up. Amtrak works on a strict bucket system. There are (I believe) four fare buckets. 330 days out, when a ticket is first bookable, the fares start at the lowest bucket. After a certain number of seats are booked (say, 25%, though I'm not sure of the specific percentage), it jumps to the next fare bucket. When 50% are booked, you get the third bucket, and the last 25% of the seats go at the highest bucket.
There is no such thing as fares going down, because unless a rush of people cancel their tickets, buckets will only fill up and make the fares go higher. Amtrak does not do what the airlines do and manually restrict certain buckets only to release them later and/or file new, lower fares. Perhaps Amtrak could make more money by implementing a system more like the airlines (so that they could, say, open only the highest fare bucket on all trains operating at Thanksgiving, their busiest time of year, since by definition 75% of the seats on any given sold-out train are NOT going for top dollar), but until they do, it is ALWAYS and 100% in your favor to book earlier rather than later.
That, combined with the fact that your tickets are fully refundable until you pick up the paper ticket stock from a station/machine, mean that it's a no-brainer to book now.
Actually Jackal, that's not entirely correct.
First, there are indeed 4 buckets for coach seating on LD trains. However there are 5 buckets for sleepers. One nice thing about booking a sleeper though is the fact that one always pays the lowest bucket price for the railfare (coach) price, no matter what bucket level is currently being sold to coach pax.
Second, Amtrak is a bit of an oddity. If I book a coach seat or a sleeper at the lowest bucket price for a trip 5 months from now, and then cancel say 3 weeks before departure, the room that I had confirmed will go back into inventory at the lowest bucket price without regard for what bucket level the remaining sleepers are at. The same is true for coach seats.
Finally, there are occasions on certain trains during the holidays for example, where no seats and/or sleepers start out at the lowest bucket price. Even if Amtrak does put up some rooms/seat at the low bucket price, they might put up less at that low bucket than normal. For example, if we take your number of 25% of seats at the lowest bucket, that might be normal for say the City of New Orleans. However, during Thanksgiving week, they might only put 10% of the seats up for sale at the low bucket price.
Amtrak can and does vary how many seats/rooms are available at what bucket level, based upon anticipated ridership and by train. More popular trains have less inventory available at the lowest bucket, than do trains that aren't very popular.