Looking for an alternative mode of traveling this holiday season? Maybe you should think about booking a Borealis train ticket.
For starters, you don't have all the hassles of flying or the distractions of driving, says Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari.
"Whether it's this huge vehicle looming in your rearview mirror or someone in the lane next to you holding the phone and yakking on it, or someone on the other side of you putting on makeup or shaving, the amount of distraction now in cars makes driving, at least in my mind, a whole lot less pleasant than it was years ago," Magliari explained.
You might agree with that, not to mention the nostalgia of a train trip.
And although ridership On Borealis is up, Magliari says business - as always - could be better.
"We're up around 5% across the system, hitting a new total of about 34.5 million customers," he says. "That would be even more if we had more railcars and locomotives to put people on."
Amtrak is currently in a ridership wave post-COVID with riding the train this holiday season quite popular.
"Driving is just so miserable, and that's our primary competition," says Magliari. "Despite every effort by MnDOT, and WisDOT, and the other DOTs, driving is just not very pleasant, especially this time of year with the kind of winter we've already started to have."
According to Amtrak, the most popular destination for the Borealis train is Chicago, but there are plenty of hot spots in between and to the west of Minnesota.
"Our job at Amtrak is to connect big cities and big cities, big cities and little cities, little cities and little cities, and medium cities all between," Magliari explains. "And for us on the train when we're already going through these communities, it's not a big deal for us to stop. It's not like the intercity bus network."
Magliari says if you have not booked a ticket yet for January, February or March, you better do so now before space runs out. You can find more information here.