Amtrak's New App: Does It Actually Make Travel Easier?

Amtrak's move to electronic ticketing in July ended one of the bigger annoyances of passenger rail in America: the frantic search for an open Quik-Trak machine in the last few minutes before your train leaves.

But that switch also freed the government-owned railroad to join many of the airlines it competes with in bidding for a spot on your smartphone's list of applications: Amtrak shipped an iOS app in August, followed in October by a counterpart for Android.

My first thought on seeing those releases was: Why bother with an app when you can show the e-ticket PDF on your phone's screen or print out a copy? But after using the Android version to book and board a round-trip from Washington to New York, I think I see where Amtrak's going with this.

Shopping for a ticket is no more or less inconvenient than on Amtrak's site (for instance, you still can't apply a discount unless all of your itinerary qualifies for it), except that neither app lets you book with Guest Rewards points yet.

Once you've paid, a menu item adds your itinerary to your phone's calendar, something Amtrak's website can't do. That's available in more places in the Android app, while the iOS edition only offers this shortcut on the confirmation page.