I was on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor Line on Friday. While traveling through the Connecticut I decided to call a long time friend of mine on my cell phone. The call was dropped four times. I have always known that there is spotty coverage along the line, but frankly this was ridiculous. While on the call my friend noted that he had driven through rural North Carolina just a few weeks ago and his wife held a telephone conversation uninterupted for an hour.
This is just another example of how our highways have been favored over our railroads. The lack of cell phone infrastructure is not Amtrak’s fault per se. However, they are not blameless either. Amtrak should be working with Verizon and AT&T to build cell towers on or near their tracks, especially if they truly want to be known as a business-friendly line. Amtrak could give easements to the telephone companies on their land in order to build more towers. This is an agreement that would benefit both the mobile phone corporations and Amtrak. Train rides are pretty luxurious when compared to a car ride or a plane ride. It is a shame that one of the contemporary amenities of most highway drives in the Northeast–cell phone coverage–is currently partially missing along the premier passenger train route in the country.
July 30, 2009 at 8:23 pm
The only things keeping the rail lines from having great wireless coverage are a select number of Republican and Democrat politicians who are in bed protecting certain contracts. It has nothing to do with the inability of the wireless carriers to fill in the coverage gaps — and everything to do with greed.
August 16, 2009 at 11:50 pm
It sounds like you’re creating problems yourself by trying to solve this issue instead of looking at why their is a problem in the first place.
February 11, 2011 at 6:22 pm
There are many along the Amtrak Northeast Corridor in Connecticut who feel trampled by the use of Amtrak to convey customers between New York and Boston. Now they want cell towers lining our shoreline and invading our historical villages. Shame on Amtrak and those who can’t stand to be away from their iPhones for an hour or so. Let Amtrak finance and put in place a wireless intrastructure like they have done in Utah by Nomad Digital, the very same company they are using to implement their wi-fi for Acela and forget lining our shorelline with butt ugly towers.