I just got back from a cross country train trip from the northeast to the west coast and back where I brought my bike along and have some advice/notes to share. This was my first long distance Amtrak trip and my first time bikepacking. In the end I ended up doing less bikepacking than I would have liked, but had some great experiences and visited a bunch of friends along the way. Hopefully this info is helpful for anyone looking to integrate Amtrak into a bike tour/bike packing trip. [This was my route](https://imgur.com/2hRP4ed) if anyone has any specific questions about these stations/trains I’d be happy to answer below.
**Tickets:**
I bought a [USA Rail Pass](https://www.amtrak.com/deals-discounts/multi-ride-rail-passes.html) which gets you 10 tickets in a 30 day window for $500 (keep an eye out for sales though). I ended up cashing that in for the equivalent of $1200 worth of tickets and I only used 8 of the 10 segments before mine expired. The advice in this section mostly applies to using a railpass and a bike. Read more about the pass at the link above, but TLDR is if you’re travelling to a bunch of different places in a month and don’t mind sleeping in coach then it’s a great way to get around. There are some nuances and limitations to the rail pass, like it’s not great for booking busy routes or nearby dates (you can’t buy the “flexible” tier tickets which are the final few spots on a train). You can however book the same segment (Portland to SF for instance) on multiple (up to 2) dates if you aren’t sure which one you’re gonna take, which can come in handy when you’re trying to meet the train on your bike.
The rail pass does not include any provision for your bike, and the only way to book a ticket for your bike is to call. It’s a bit of a hassle but having called Amtrak maybe 15 times over the past month I can say they usually pretty helpful, the wait times aren’t too long, and the callback feature is great. It’s $20 per segment or [800 rewards points](https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycletouring/comments/142lmjq/psa_adding_a_bike_to_your_amtrak_ticket_costs_800/) to add a bike, and importantly it *gets booked as a separate ticket*. This means you have to keep track of the res number for your rail pass, as well as any res numbers for the tickets for your bike. And often they will end up being multiple tickets unless you are organized enough to plan your whole trip ahead of time and book all the bike tickets in one phone call.
** Make sure the conductor/ticket agent scans your railpass as well as your bike reservation/ticket. ** This advice only applies if your bike reservation includes multiple segments like mine did. I travelled from Boston to NY, and then when I went to get the train from NY to CHI the guy said my ticket came up as a no-show because nobody scanned my bike ticket in Boston.
If you change a segment (date or origin/dest station) on your railpass don’t forget to change the associated bike reservation by calling in too. It’s also not easy to see from the app if there is even bike space left on a train when you book a segment on your railpass. There are quite a few spots for bikes but they do fill up.
**Getting your bike on the train:**
For northeast corridor trains (and maybe some other short routes) you can just walk onto the train with your bike. When you get to the train the conductor will help you find the bike rack and you have to take the front wheel off and rack it up. Super easy and straight foward.
For long distance trains the bike goes in the baggage car. Go to the ticket counter at the station and they’ll give you a tag for the bike. The baggage car is windowless and usually at one end of the train. You bring the bike to the baggage car and the baggage attendant will help you get it on. Everyone says you have to remove everything from your bike but I was able to leave my handlebar bag (tent), saddle bag, and a few other little things on the bike for every trip I took. Basically the bike just needs to be easily liftable/movable by the baggage attendant. Getting off is the reverse, though sometimes you have to hunt down the baggage attendant to get help getting the bike off. Once I saw a conductor put a bike in the baggage compartment on the first level of a coach car, but I think that’s unusual or only for more remote station stops where the engineer doesn’t line the baggage car up with the platform right.
**Bikeable stations:**
There’s some weirdness here, but the Amtrak website is a good place to start for figuring out if you can get on/off at a station with your bike. Rule of thumb is if there’s baggage service at a station, you can get your bike on/off, and otherwise give Amtrak a call and see if they’ll do it. I got off at Fraser, CO which has no baggage but has bike service, and was told to explicitly remind the conductor about it when we got close. Across the board the conductors were chill and helpful.
This post ended up being longer than I thought it would be but hopefully it’s helpful to someone. This trip was awesome and made me want to take another just to explore some of the remote towns/communities served by Amtrak. Given how critically underfunded it is Amtrak is providing pretty decent service which will hopefully only improve in the future. Feel free to ask any more questions in the comments I’ll keep an eye out and try to answer any that pop up.
by maland16
9 Comments
Where did you end up biking?
The “in 30 days” part is a deal breaker for me.
One tip I would add: it’s generally $20/segment for a bike, but it’s a single charge to check a bicycle as baggage. This requires that your point of origin, your destination, and your transfer points are all baggage stops. But if they are, you can save a few bucks by buying a bike box and paying to send your bike as baggage. It’s not as convenient, but it can be worth it because you pay around $20 for trip instead of $20 for each segment. Added bonus of not having to worry about how many bike slots are available.
I love the combination of bike and Amtrak, but your post highlights some of the issues, like Amtrak not having a website that can handle all of the complexities of train travel and having inconsistent methods of how bikes are handled. I’ve seen inconsistencies in how they handle bikes when traveling the same route at different times, so sometimes even the website is not 100% reliable, but usually a staff member will be and will let you know where to go and what to do.
Thanks for posting this!
On my most recent trip on the California Zephyr, the conductor put my bike in the baggage compartment on the first level of my coach car. So maybe this might be a little more common than you think, could just depend on the conductor?
This was awesome, because I didn’t need to take too much gear off the bike and I could access it at any point during the trip.
In the future I’m going to ask specifically if they can do that.
Thanks for the writeup!
I’d love to plan around using Amtrak for bike trips more…but I had a really stressful experience with them in 2016 where my wife and I almost missed our train due to them being super inconsistent.
It’s sad to read in the comments here that 6 years later, that’s still a problem 🙁
The Adventure Cycling website and interactive map have some useful information about Amtrak. There’s a filter on the map showing stations that accept bicycle, also a spreadsheet with station information.
I ride the California Corridor to work, and have ridden the San Joaquins, the Surfliner, and the Coast Starlight on bike trips. I was stunned at the conditions for cyclists on the Vermonter as well as the Montreal regional trains. While the Starlight requires you to lift your bike (without bags) up to the baggage handler standing at chest height, all the others have one 2 foot step up and then you just roll your bike to the rack/ stowage area. In the northeast, you climb about 3 stairs up a narrow entry. I could only do this by first throwing my saddlebags up or down. Not something to be undertaken lightly by anyone not fairly able bodied.
I just had amtrak tell me there was no way to take a bike from Seattle to Boston. Going to do Vancouver to Toronto and then Greyhound instead.
Wonderful write-up. Why do Americans make everything so damn complicated?