I took a ride on the Rolls-Royce of buses — and it was better than Amtrak

The modern airport experience is not an enjoyable one.

Security lines, forever-rising ticket prices, and seemingly arbitrary fees all create a stressful and pricey experience for inter-city travel.

Some are looking to other forms of transportation for an alternative. Amtrak had record ridership numbers in 2014, tallying 11.6 million passengers along the Northeast Corridor alone.

And a study from the Chaddick Institute shows that inter-city bus ridership has also risen by an increase of 2.1% since 2013.

Yet buses are cramped and slow, earning their spot at the bottom rung of the transportation ladder. Trains aren't getting any faster, either, as the nation's rickety rail infrastructure ages and high-speed proposals are stymied.

I travel from New York City to Boston frequently, usually by bus, but after countless trips with my legs folded up like origami in uncomfortable seats, I'd just about had enough.

I had heard about LimoLiner, a luxury bus service that makes three round-trips between New York and Boston Monday through Thursday every week. It makes more trips between the two cities over the weekend.

With perks like free meals and individual leather seats, LimoLiner made Megabus sound like a stagecoach by comparison.

On a recent trip to Boston, I decided to compare LimoLiner with an Amtrak regional train to see which one offered a more comfortable experience for the price — and I was surprised by what I found.

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I was pretty excited to be taking the train after so many terrible bus rides to Boston and back. I boarded the Amtrak train at Penn Station, a cavernous and ill-conceived tangle of walkways and escalators beneath Madison Square Garden in New York. No one wants to go to Penn Station.

The train left right on time after a painless boarding process, and within five minutes we were zipping through Queens.

At $128 one-way, the train isn't wildly expensive, but it's not exactly the lap of luxury. Of course, the prices differ depending on the departure time. My train left at 7 a.m.

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