Day: November 25, 2025

• I had to book Amtrak instead of flying, and it made my holiday travel experience less of a hassle.
• A generous luggage policy and my worry about airport disruptions made train travel more appealing.
• The trip can be uncomfortably long, but flexible seating and beautiful views make it worth it.

After procrastinating to buy my flight home for Thanksgiving one too many times (sorry, Mom), I’ve been left with no other option but to turn to the Pennsylvanian, a 9-hour and 20-minute Amtrak train that travels from New York to Pittsburgh.

This time, I paid $316 for the round-trip ticket, and was happy to book the train instead of a flight. I’ve taken this train ride almost a dozen times in the past five years, and have turned into somewhat of a train enthusiast because of it.

Additionally, flying disruptions — such as the recent government shutdown — and the seemingly endless construction at my hometown airport have made me more inclined to take the train over the past few years.

It’s not perfect, but from avoiding never-ending security lines at the airport to having a row to myself, here are the four reasons I prefer traveling by train.

1. There are no security lines or airport hassles

I’ve been stranded in too many hour-plus airport security lines to count. When I arrive at the train station, I simply wait for my track to be announced, which typically occurs 15 minutes before departure, and then board the train when it arrives.

There aren’t any annoying security lines or shuttles to take between terminals, so I can get to the train station around 30 minutes before the train leaves. Plus, boarding usually goes pretty fast because the train attendants can stagger the boarding lines between train cars.

2. I don’t have to worry about size restrictions or checking too many bags

Have you ever shed a tear watching TSA throw away a precious perfume or hand lotion you just bought?

One of the lovely things about traveling by train is that there are no size restrictions on liquids. This is a small win, but when I fly, I’m constantly holding my breath to see if my carry-on toiletry bag will make it through TSA, so it’s another tick on the pros list for me.

Additionally, Amtrak has a really generous luggage policy. Each passenger is allowed one personal item, two carry-ons, and two checked bags free of charge. Additional checked luggage is only $20 a bag.

3. There aren’t assigned seats, and I usually have a row to myself

With no assigned seats, there’s usually an opportunity for me to find a row to myself. I’ve taken this train route five times in the last year, and there’s only been one ride where I wasn’t able to snag that luxury.

There’s a roughly two-to-four-hour period of the train ride where I lose cell service entirely, and I use that time as a deep work block to get writing, planning, or anything else that I need to get done accomplished.

One benefit of having a row to myself, besides the obvious extra room, is that I can spread out my work in front of me and not worry about bothering anyone.

4. It’s a beautiful train ride

Lastly, it’s a scenic ride. Although I try to focus on getting some work done or taking stock of my priorities, both personally and professionally, I sometimes can’t help but get lost in the views for hours.

My favorite part of the ride is about halfway through, when we go on the horseshoe curve in Altoona, PA. It’s a 220-degree railroad curve that was finished in 1854. I’ve now seen the curve through almost every season and look forward to marveling at the view each time.

As much as I do love the train, the ride itself isn’t always the smoothest, the café car never has consistent hours, and sometimes, by hour six, the 9-hour ride feels like it will never end.

But overall, if I have the time to spare, I’ll always choose the train over flying. I’ve realized that having this time for myself helps me reset in between destinations.

Got a travel hack to share? Email this reporter at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.

• Pinterest CEO Bill Ready is all in on search.
• Google dominates the all-purpose search market, but rivals are making gains in particular niches.
• This story is one of a five-part series exploring the changing online search landscape.

Four years ago, Pinterest was bleeding users.

The platform known for mood boards had made a big effort to compete with TikTok — as did nearly every other social media platform at the time — with short-form video, shoppable livestreaming, and paying creators.

It didn’t work. When Bill Ready took over as Pinterest’s CEO in 2022, he felt the company needed a new direction.

“I didn’t think the world needed a fourth or fifth best TikTok,” Ready told Business Insider in an interview. Ready, who left his previous post as Google’s president of commerce, decided that a search experience that was both personalized to each user and highly visual would be the platform’s special sauce.

“Search is the core of the business,” Ready said. “The business didn’t have that clarity three years ago.”

Pinterest’s user growth has rebounded since Ready’s takeover, steadily increasing for the past nine quarters. It recently hit 600 million monthly active users, and about two-thirds of the interactions on the platform are related to search.

Pinterest’s focus on search has been a hit with users, with about 80 billion monthly search queries, according to the company.

It’s also helped Pinterest win over Gen Z users.

More than half the platform’s users are now Gen Z, Ready said. In a 2025 survey conducted by Adobe of 800 consumers and 200 business owners, 47% of Gen Z respondents said they used Pinterest for search.

“At the core of why we’re winning with Gen Z is what we’re doing with visual search and what we’re doing to make it more positive than social media,” Ready said.

Pinterest has more to prove. The company’s share price hasn’t returned to its pandemic high. While Pinterest’s revenue increased 17% year-over-year in the third quarter, its stock plummeted over 20% following its earnings release, which included an earnings miss and weak guidance for the fourth quarter. Pinterest management said ad sales had been negatively affected by tariffs.

Raymond James analyst Josh Beck rated the company at a neutral “market perform” following the third-quarter earnings, but wrote he was “encouraged” by Pinterest’s broader progress in shopping and “untapped” advertising opportunity.

Search will continue to play a significant role in Pinterest’s advertising strategy, as Ready emphasized in its latest earnings that Pinterest search results are “highly commercial in nature.”

Broadly, search has been undergoing a shake-up due to new consumer behaviors, such as using TikTok or ChatGPT to find answers. Advancements in technology, including visual search, are shifting how people — especially younger generations — search, said EMARKETER analyst Sky Canaves. (EMARKETER is a sister company to Business Insider.)

“Whatever is the easiest way to find information and has the least amount of friction will be most likely to be used for the particular search cases, whether it’s voice, or text, or images,” Canaves said.

How search is transforming Pinterest’s business

Pinterest has rolled out a series of revamped search tools under Ready’s watch, including an AI-powered tool that enables users to discover content tailored to their body type, skin tone, and hair pattern.

In May, the platform expanded its “visual search” features, allowing users to find exact products or similar items. It’s a category that competitors like Google, TikTok, and new startups are also targeting.

Here’s how it works: Imagine you’re redecorating your apartment and save an image for inspiration to your Pinterest board. With visual search, you can shop right from that image — clicking on a lamp, for example, will surface links to similar items and sometimes an exact match.

With stronger search tools — and the data that comes with them — Pinterest has opened up more doors for advertisers and in-app shopping.

Lower-funnel ads, meaning ads that drive the user to make a purchase, make up two-thirds of Pinterest’s business, Ready said.

“Search behaviors are key inputs powering its ads business,” Forrester analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf told Business Insider. “That intel makes Pinterest a really attractive high-intent surface for advertisers.”

AI is also playing a significant role in how users shop via Pinterest by learning their tastes.

“Effectively, what we’ve created is an AI-powered shopping assistant,” Ready said. In October, Pinterest officially launched a shopping assistant tool that users can chat with verbally or over text.

Users who visit Pinterest to search, whether for shopping or inspiration, are “more valuable” than pass-by scrollers, said Kamran Ansari, Pinterest’s former head of corporate development.

“The whole reason why Google built a $3 trillion company is search has the highest kind of intent signal of anything you can possibly do,” Ansari said.

Why search is ‘up for grabs’ more than ever

Ready, who worked at Google for a little over two years before joining Pinterest, is well acquainted with the stakes in search.

Google still owns about 90% of the market share for traditional search, according to data from Cloudflare.

In a March EMARKETER survey, 93% of US consumers said they had used Google in the last year. There were also many players cited in the EMARKETER survey that fall outside the traditional search market, from e-commerce platforms like Amazon (56%) and Walmart (45%) to video platforms like YouTube (49%) and TikTok (29%).

“The future of search is more up for grabs than it has been in the last 25 years,” Ready said.

According to a recent McKinsey survey of US consumers, about 50% said they “intentionally seek out AI-powered search engines, with a majority of users saying it’s the top digital source they use to make buying decisions.”

As players like ChatGPT and Perplexity aim to battle Google for the wider, all-purpose search market, Pinterest is focused on improving its visually driven niche, Ready said.