[Guest Blog] Acelabration! Let’s Talk Seats

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to be invited to ride along for a short segment of yesterday’s sneak preview run of Amtrak’s new NextGen Acela trainset. I was thrilled and jumped at the chance, and I’ve got quite a few thoughts based on my quick Providence-to-Boston jaunt. But based on the early social media commentary (by people who, as far as I can tell, have not yet actually been aboard), one thing stands out: concerns about the seats. Commenters have been posting that the seats “look terrible” or, more crudely, “suck.”

Having actually ridden the train, I thought I’d weigh in here. Spoiler alert! They do not “suck.” In fact, I thought they were great, even though I was only in them for a short time. Jim Mathews rode the entire length of the route, so I’m sure he can give you more detail, but the bottom line is that if you were happy with the seats on the first-gen Acela, you’re almost certainly going to be happy with these.

I get the concern. The “Venture” trainsets that run corridor services out of Chicago have terrible seats, so anyone who’s ridden those would rightly be worried. But those seats were an IDOT decision, not an Amtrak one. Amtrak, in my opinion, got this one right. Given the heavy use of Acela by NYC business types and DC politicos and power brokers, they’d have been foolish not to.

Of course, I don’t expect you to just take my word for it, and I was curious about it myself, so I decided to be more scientific about it. I have a handy-dandy tape measure (pictured) that I almost always take along whenever I travel because I geek out over seat stat comparisons. So that I’d have a same-day comparison, I booked a first-gen Acela ticket down to Providence before riding back up on the NextGen.

And you’d better believe I measured the seats. I even measured a couple of different seats a couple of times just to make sure things were consistent. Here’s what I found:

I’ll start with the width, where you can see there’s a bit of a trade-off. While the total seat width (measured from armrest to the center point between the seats) was slightly more generous on the NextGen trainsets in both business and first, the actual width of the cushion under you was a bit smaller in both cases: by half an inch in business and by a full inch in first, though it’s still a generous 22” in first.

But look at that pitch! Seat pitch is measured from a point on one seat to the same point on the seat behind or in front of it, and is the industry standard analog for how much legroom you’ll have. NextGen Acela First riders get an almost 7% improvement in legroom as compared to the first-gen; Business class riders get a full 10% improvement.

If you were concerned that Amtrak would boost capacity by cramming you into a tighter space, I can assure you (with numbers!) that this isn’t the case. The opposite, in fact.

Moving on, the seatback tray tables, while somewhat smaller, are also an improvement, largely because they’re no longer 750 pounds, and you don’t need to do “arm day” to actually move them.

The last thing to address, and I know this will be a controversial one: the recline. I found it plenty generous in business (though I didn’t measure specifically) and can’t report on first, since I didn’t actually sit there. But unlike the first-gen Acela seats, where you tilt your seatback back, these recline by sliding the seat bottom forward, like the Talgos that ran on the Cascades route 20 years ago. I don’t mind this style of recline, and in fact I prefer it: as someone who travels with a laptop and tries to get work done, I can tell you that even where the legroom is generous, it can be challenging when the seat in front of you angles into your space and gets in the way of your laptop screen. But I get that there are people who would rather have “true” recline. As with all things, it’s a trade off. The upside is that the person in front of you can no longer “lean in” to your space.

Finally, I know you’re all wondering: How was the food?

I can’t tell you. I didn’t eat.

See you on the rails!