Blog: Amtrak

For those who can't or don't want to drive, it's not easy to travel from New York to Martha's Vineyard. Other than flying, which is pricey, the Vineyard Fast Ferry, which runs between Quonset Point, RI and Oak Bluffs, MA, is an appealing alternative.

The ferry advertises convenient connections to Amtrak, and even posts schedules showing the best connections. A taxi service, Little Rest Limo, takes passengers directly between the two. Unfortunately, the connection information is misleading, often leading to frustrated passengers who miss their trains or ferries.

I've taken this route several times in the past, usually without a hitch. But yesterday, the advertised train connection was too short to realistically make, and since it was a holiday weekend, we arrived at Kingston at 1 pm having just missed the 12:41 train and every Amtrak train to New York sold out until 10:41 pm that night. Fortunately, there were a few seats available as far as New Haven, where we could take the Metro-North commuter rail to Manhattan.

Therefore, if you are thinking about taking the Vineyard Fast Ferry, here are a few tips to keep in mind.

1. The ferry is always a little late.

   The schedule shows the trip taking an hour and a half, but this isn't true. Even when the ferry leaves right on time and doesn't encounter any difficulties, it still really takes about an hour and 45 minutes. Going to the island this isn't a big deal, except tell your family or friends picking you up to save themselves the wait and show up 15 minutes later.

   But when trying to make a train, don't expect the ferry to dock when the schedule claims. Plus, it takes time to unload the ferry, check everyone in for the vans, etc.

2. The taxi takes longer than they say.

   The Web site says that the station is only 15 minutes from the ferry. And some of the other passengers on my trip yesterday reported that the ferry personnel were claiming the trip could be made in 15 minutes. This might be true mid-week in the middle of the day. But there are many small roads and traffic lights along the way, and often traffic. Expect the trip to take 25 minutes, or more on holiday weekends.

3. Pick a ferry with a 1½ hour connection time.

   The ferry's site lists the best connecting train to each ferry. Most of them leave 1½ hours to connection (for example, on the mid-summer schedule, 18 out of 22 northbound trips per week give 1½ hours or more, though only 11 of 21 southbound trips do), but unfortunately, the trips most likely to be crowded, like the Friday 4:30 ferry to the Vineyard or the Sunday 10:30 or 3:30 ferries back to the mainland, have the shortest connection times. (Northbound means from NYC to the Vineyard, though the ferry really travels east and slightly south. I'm using the terminology to match their train schedules.)

   Northbound, it's not uncommon for Amtrak to run an hour late. Southbound, the vans often sit at Quonset for up to half an hour just to wait for everyone to get off the ferry and get sorted out. An hour and a half connection time is pretty safe, though not 100% safe (Amtrak is occasionally more late, and the ferry sometimes runs into trouble).

   It's okay to book a shorter connection time, but just be aware. If it's an off-peak time, like mid-week, your chance of making it with an hour connection is pretty good. Just make sure you have a contingency option (see the next tip).

4. Northbound, leave extra connection time if you're trying to make the last ferry.

   If you go up in the morning and miss your ferry, it's not great, but not so terrible - there's a building you can wait in for the four hours until the next ferry. You should be able to get on the next ferry since capacity isn't so tightly restricted.

   But if you're on the last ferry and miss it, then you're stuck paying $100+ for a taxi to New Bedford for the ferry there.

   If your train is really late and you're on the last ferry, ask the conductor if you can pay to stay on the train one more stop to Providence, which is a lot closer to New Bedford, or even just to Boston, where you could spend the night and then take the bus in the morning. This is a last-ditch contingency, but it's much better than being stuck in the middle of nowhere in Rhode Island.

5. Southbound, consider booking the next later train on holiday weekends.

   If your connection time is tighter and/or it's a holiday weekend, it's not that terrible to miss the train because there's another one two hours later. Almost all of the time, there's room on that train - Amtrak trains don't usually sell out. But they do on holiday weekends, and you don't want to show up at Kingston station (a small building with nothing around it) and then find out the next train has no space.

   Therefore, during the busiest weekends, I recommend booking the next train two hours later instead. If you make it in plenty of time, you can change your ticket to the earlier train. You might have to wait longer while everybody else hops on the train, but it's insurance against the worst case scenario.

6. The ferry occasionally doesn't run in bad weather.

   The ferry goes really fast, but can't travel in really choppy water. When this happens, the Vineyard Fast Ferry company will arrange alternate transport from Quonset, but it could take a few extra hours. So decide whether you'd rather try to stay on the train to Providence and get a taxi to New Bedford (but call and make sure the New Bedford ferry is running), or if you have family or friends in Boston, to continue all the way there and take the bus to Woods Hole, which is much less weather-prone (the main ferry from Woods Hole uses huge car ferries which don't feel the waves nearly so much).

With all these contingencies, it might sound really scary to take the Vineyard Fast Ferry. It's not, and I'm going to continue using them. If you just choose ferries that have 1½ hour connection times, then you'll make the connection almost all of the time, and in the few other cases, you can simply take the next ferry or train.

Ideally, Vineyard Fast Ferry will adjust their schedule to eliminate the nasty 40-minute connection times on Saturdays and Sundays and other risky too-short connections. Or if they can't do that, they should at least recommend people book the next train to get an extra 2 hours of buffer time. Until then, consider linking to this post so that more people can find this survival guide and avoid the risk of being stranded in sleepy maritime Rhode Island.

Providence's T.F. Green airport is a 15 minute drive from downtown Providence, but it is directly adjacent to the Amtrak tracks where trains from New York to Boston pass every day. Imagine if there were a stop there, so train riders from the north and south could connect to flights to a variety of destinations, or rent cars to drive to the many seaside towns in Rhode Island and Cape Cod?

The State of Rhode Island has been thinking this for quite some time. For years, the T.F. Green airport Web page has said "until the Warwick station is built..." But no station had been built. Last month, Rhode Island broke ground on the station at long last. And having MBTA trains, which currently run to Providence, extended to the airport would make it easily accessible to millions from Boston and points south, relieving congestion at Logan.

But transit riders from New York and Connecticut may not be so lucky. According to the Providence Journal, Amtrak refuses to stop at the airport. Apparently, Amtrak wants the area around the station built with extra tracks so that Amtrak's trains don't get blocked behind other trains. It's not clear whether, absent the tracks, the Regional trains will still stop there, or no trains at all. Right now, Regional trains stop at many little tiny stations, like Kingston, RI, that certainly don't have four tracks.

If Regionals stop but Acela Expresses bypass the station, I can understand that - most customers are traveling between the major cities, and Amtrak needs to keep the running time as quick as possible. But if Regionals don't stop there, that is just ridiculously brain dead.

I found out about the station in the context of transferring at Providence en route from Martha's Vineyard to New York. The Vineyard is pretty easy to get to from Boston: a 1½ to 2 hour drive, or a 2 hour 20 minute bus ride, plus a 45-minute ferry. But how to get there from New York City?

Read more...

I take Amtrak from New York to Boston and generally like it a lot. I don't like to rag on Amtrak, an organization that has a nearly impossible mandate, not enough funding, and politicians ready to gut it at every turn except for keeping their own silly money-losing routes to their own home states.

However, the dining car is just ridiculous. They are always out of almost everything. They typically have one pretty standard entree, like a turkey sandwich. And if I try to get it, they're usually out of it. Which is okay, especially if it's a Regional train and I don't try to get it until New London going north or something.

But Saturday I took the Acela Express to Boston. A bit before New Haven, I went to get some food. Turkey sandwich? Out of it. How about cheese pizza? Out of it. Apple juice? Orange juice? Out of it, out of it, out of it. I settled for water and some pepperoni pizza, picking off the pepperoni by hand. It wasn't even that good.

Okay, so it was a fairly full train and I did wait an hour and a half after the restocking in New York. You'd think they would have more juice at least, but whatever. The final insult came today heading home. I had gotten some food not from Amtrak but forgot to grab a few Odwallas from the Boston office fridge. Ten minutes after the train left Boston - it's origin point, mind you - I went to get some juice. Out of it. No juice at all. Sold out already? No, it's just that they never loaded any in Boston.

What's the point of a cafe car if it's always out of everything? Amtrak. Nice trains, seat power outlets, but always out of food.