People flew 800 million miles domestically in 2024, a 3.5% improve from the 12 months prior, in response to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Knowledge from the Airways Reporting Company totaled airline ticket gross sales at $8.1 billion final month. And lobbying group Airways for America has introduced that home carriers have invested over $21 billion since 2022, shopping for new planes and including extra flights to satisfy demand.
Properly, this simply in: A current Savanta ComRes survey discovered that 54% of People, if given the selection, would really relatively take a practice.
Stunned? Amtrak isn’t. The nation’s long-distance passenger railroad is nicely conscious of the inherent benefits of practice journey, together with area to stretch one’s legs and stations within the coronary heart of downtown. Through the pandemic, it promoted its non-public compartments as Covid-avoidance zones.
Now, Amtrak is making its newest pitch for selecting rail over runway. On Aug. 28, the Acela—Amtrak’s high-speed practice that plies the 457 miles of monitor between Washington, D.C. and Boston—will put its NextGen gear into income service: 28 high-tech, aerodynamic trains modeled off the TGV trains in France.
The brand new gear provides Amtrak rather a lot to crow about. It additionally appears to be fueling a punchier angle within the railroad’s advertising and marketing, a swagger first on view final October when its “Retrain for Journey” marketing campaign invited vacationers to “keep away from the stress of flying.” Whereas Amtrak has lengthy positioned its unique Acela trains, launched in 2000, as a viable various to the airplane, the perk-filled NextGen gear now makes the rail expertise—by Amtrak’s estimation—superior to it.
“As we introduce our new practice units,” EVP and chief industrial officer Eliot Hamlisch instructed ADWEEK, “we needed to ensure that we took the nice [aspects of the train] and amplified them in all of the methods we may.”
For instance, whereas planes provide fundamental WiFi, Acela’s NextGen vehicles have 5G WiFi. Airways serve meals from a cart; the brand new trains have a restaurant automotive with a full menu and grab-and-go choices. NextGen’s redesigned seats—with winged headrests for added privateness—appear like straightforward chairs in comparison with the common seating at 30,000 ft.
The railroad’s pluck greatest comes throughout in Hamlisch’s video tour of the brand new practice, the place he playfully—and all too purposefully—takes the airways to job.
“You would match three airplane restrooms in right here!” Hamlisch says, standing within the Acela’s capacious restroom. “Listed below are the center seats,” he intones, whereas seated within the aisle seat, earlier than interrupting himself: “Oh wait, that’s proper—there aren’t any!”
Additionally serving to to announce the NextGen trains is the notable slogan “In-built America, for America.” Amtrak has said publicly that it employed union labor to construct its new trains in upstate New York, utilizing elements from 180 suppliers in 29 states and, within the course of, created some 15,000 jobs.
Whereas Acela trains serve solely a slender slice of the nation, Amtrak is clearly directing this messaging at a much bigger viewers, rigorously calibrating it to the nationwide vibe. A survey final 12 months by the Chicago Council on International Affairs discovered that 66% of People favored the restriction of imported items if it will safeguard American jobs. Home employment is a kind of uncommon points with widespread bipartisan assist, and that’s not a foul factor to have: Amtrak acquired some $2.4 billion in federal appropriations in 2024.
“In a world the place there’s plenty of goodness to focus on concerning the practice,” Hamlisch stated, “the truth that it’s produced right here within the U.S. we felt was one thing of paramount significance.”
And relevance. “Amtrak is studying the room, studying the nationwide temper,” noticed advertising and marketing advisor David J. Deal. “Individuals are insecure about their jobs. They’re insecure concerning the state of the financial system typically. For a enterprise to say they consider in America and in addition creating 15,000 U.S. jobs may be very credible.”
Even so, in Deal’s view, the railroad was sensible to flaunt its new facilities first.
“Nobody’s going to journey on Amtrak as a result of they need a practice that was inbuilt America,” he stated. “However it has to assist their model to make use of America as a supporting message.”
One problem that the NextGen Acela trains nonetheless can’t surmount are the constraints imposed by numerous sections of the Northeast Hall tracks, the place grade crossings and a 152-year-old stone tunnel in Baltimore drive trains to sluggish manner down. However only for the report, Hamlisch stated, “our outdated practice units went 150 miles an hour. Our new practice units go 160.”
