We are planning our trip to see the total eclipse in April. I checked whether we could get there via Amtrak. Seemingly it should be easy - to go from San Jose, California to San Antonio, Texas - both are on Amtrak routes.

But no! From experience we know that Amtrak trains can be 8+ hours late for a connection (we were 12+ hours late once from Denver to Emeryville.) So we have to plan an extra layover for connection in Los Angeles.

And then the Los Angeles=>Texas runs only 3 days a week!!

(And why are there two trains - physically joined together - with different prices?)

The Amtrak website can't remember origination/destinations and has lots of ambiguities. Even if you find a route that works, you need to go to an entirely different place, start all over again, to make a booking - and find out it's full.

Took about 60 seconds to do the same for Southwest flights.

Amtrak's websites are full of 3rd party fetches - bad, bad, bad.

Amtrak - you gotta do better, even adequate would be an improvement.