I took my three year old son on a train ride from Lafayette to Chicago and back. Intellecutally, I support the concept of mass transit. As a practical matter, I now understand why train travel isn’t very popular locally. Round trip, we spent about 8.5 hours on the train (and I won’t include the drive time from Union Station to my friend’s house in Naperville and back). For my son and I to get tickets was about $60. Since I already have and pay for a car anyway, the marginal cost for me to have simply driven to my friend’s house would have been (assuming 30 miles to the gallon and $3 per gallon) $30 and, round trip, door-to-door would have been about 5 hours. For the train experience, I paid twice the money and added 3.5 hours to my travel time.
Even so, it would have been an o.k. undertaking if not for the hour delay on the way up between Dyer, Indiana and Chicago. No explanation from Amtrak during the wait. Just stopped on the tracks for an hour. After the wait, word circulated that a big freight train was just completely blocking a yard we had to pass through. I get the sense that this kind of thing is not isolated. Fortunately, my son was quite well behaved. He got a little antsy toward the end of each train ride, but hey, he’s three.
All my bellyaching aside, I could see taking a train as an enjoyable experience if I was traveling without kids, for a reasonably long distance, and on a really loose time table. The coach seats were fairly comfortable — being able to walk around makes the train much more palatable than an airplane or the bus. If I could just wander off to the dining car and have a beer when I wanted or just hang out and read a book or a magazine, getting up periodically to stretch my legs on a trip where I was happy to get to the destination anytime during the day, the train could be relaxing and enjoyable. Still, that’s a pretty narrow subset of the population who has to get from Point A to Point B. So, something fairly dramatic would have to change before we see a shift from automobile travel to train travel. Maybe all of the subsidies for roads, cars, and gasoline get dumped and the cost of traveling in this fashion becomes prohibitive. Maybe, train travel somehow becomes more reliable and expeditious. Or, more likely I fear, nothing changes too dramatically and train travel remains unrealistic as a serious commuting option.
It’s a vicious cycle: limited market (as you well describe) means limited revenue, which over time tends to degrade service, which over time tends to degrade market share/revenue.
At least you can get a train in Lafayette, Doug. Ten or 15 years ago Amtrak
endedrerouted service to Fort Wayne via Garrett and Waterloo. Very convenient.Several years ago I had to be in Chicago for a week at a time three times, staying downtown at a place where parking was $25 per day. I investigated flying (did that once) and one-way car rentals from Fort Wayne to Chicago, and then back again at the end of the week. I did each of these once and they were both cheaper than mileage/parking. But the third thing I investigated was the train….and it simply was not feasible – for a variety of reasons but one that I recall is that the schedule would have involved me needing to stay an extra night both ways.
My grandfather was a railroader (the U.P.) and I love the train ride itself. But the logistics are dicey. I must disagree with your title in one respect, Doug: Greyhound is for people with more time than money, but Amtrak seems to work best for people who have a fair amount of BOTH.
Reminds me of a favorite Twain quote:
There are two problems with train travel: many track beds are in disrepair and trains have to go slow,and freight trains have right of way over passenger trains.Ive taken the train from Chicago to NYC a couple times but driving is faster if you have two drivers.It’s a 20 hour Interstate drive,and the train ride is 20 hours but they can’t maintain a schedule. I’ve also ridden trains in Europe and the TGV trains ( tres grande vitesse)go about 150- 200 mph( i forget exactly) and a setting glass of water doesn’t splash. It’s dizzying to just to look out the window.But Paris to Berlin is about 500 miles and Chicago to New York is about 700 miles so there’s a good comparison of distances.The huge majority of Europeans never make a trip as long as 500 miles.Amtrack is always funded less than required because no Congressman wants his area cut,but doesn’t want to spend money on the system as a whole. I think long distance train travel will eventually be dropped and we’ll be left with basically commuter railroads and then the ones along East Coast connecting large Metro-areas.It’s a shame,but train travel is dangerous now and there have been several notable accidents.
I still remember the train travel back in the 50s and that was the end of the great train travel era.Whole families went by train. We have Interstates and SUVs instead now ,so let’s rejoice at the convenience.
In case anybody is interested, I wrote a post with more of the personal details of the trip over at our family blog.
It isn’t that track beds are necessarily in bad repair, it is that they are no longer built to standards which support high speed passenger rail service. A simple example is that beds are no longer banked to allow a train to negotiate a turn at high speeds. This is done to save money and is fine for a bulk commodity freight service where the trains can operate at 30 miles per hour without a revolt on the part of passengers, but contemporary passenger trains, unless built to “lean into the curve” (an expensive system to buy) can’t operate at such speeds and provide practical point to point service for the business traveler.
A train which could average 80 miles per hour would provide convenient overnight service between Chicago and New York, which I would think would be attractive to business travelers who didn’t want to pay for hotel rooms (or rather who used the train as their hotel room) and would have a full day of work at the destination. Such service existed in the 1930’s, when American trains set the world standard, but doesn’t today. Today we have, in most of the country, essentially a third world train system. That is, a train system built to haul commodities (e.g. grain, coal) to ports. It isn’t in bad repair, the railroads are doing very well financially, it just isn’t built for passenger rail.
As an aside, I last traveled by train (for distance) in 1999 in Russia. Now those tracks were in bad repair. The trains operated at an average speed of 28 miles per hour, had all the comfort of a cattle car, but the food was excellent, and given the lack of alternatives (I wasn’t about to board a Russian civil airliner on an internal route), it was the only way to travel.
Paul,
That’s very interesting about track beds. My experience on one of my trips to NYC was that between midnight and about 4 am we were going through the mountains of PA between Pittsburg and Harrisburg at about 20-30 mph for what seemed liked hours..The conductor said the track bed was bad.I found out by next trip there was another route that missed the mountains by following the Great lakes via Buffalo and cut across through upper state New York,went along the Erie Canal,which was very interesting, and then came South through Albany,where the the cars were split with one part of train getting a new engine and going to Boston and then we followed the Husdon river to Grand Central Station in NYC. I had a roomette on that trip and ate in dining car,where I was randomly seated with other diners..two nuns and a college student..I thought I was in an old movie actually.Even with the 6 hours late arrival,it was fascinating.
Now, most of my knowledge about railroads comes from playing Railroad Tycoon 3 on my PC, so take this with a humungous grain of salt, but it was my impression that in the olden days of trains, passenger & mail trains were expresses & generally had priority over freight, & now its reversed. Seems like flipping that back to the old ways would do a lot to improve Amtrak’s fortunes, but the big freight companies like CSX would undoubtedly have a cow. And BTW Doug, my wife & daughter had a similar experience to yours a few years back, a 7-8 hour train ride from Indy to Chicago, shunting to the side for freight trains, no real meals, etc. A lot of complaining to Amtrak won her a $70 Amtrak rebate…guess what, we didn’t use it!
Just got back from Europe where we took the Eurostar from London to Paris – 2.5 hrs. and then the TGV from Paris to Lausanne. It was a great way to travel – quiet, fast and roomy.
Many better writers than I (Dave Barry and Mark Twain, for example) have written that part of the importance of keeping up pasengers’ spirits is the impression of movement. It doesn’t matter how rapid, or even nonsensical, just that you are actually moving.
Back in my salad days, I took Amtrack several times – they were long trips (1000 miles) (ish) and on every single one, I spent more time not moving than moving. This is bad.
There’s a logical connection between Indy and Chicago– where a train track would defnitely work– the median of I-65… with 45 stations built total.. it would be the fast train/ efficient/ high speed/ and often… AND we could lessen the amount of repairs construction required on the interstate. If you’re in downtown Chicago, who needs a car anyway.
ALAS.. small minds…
The real problems seem to occur (via rail & car) when you get to I-65 and I-80/94. That southeast corner of Chicago and The Region is just difficult to travel through.
Doug is right that the problems start when you get to I-80/94. Back in my college days I took Amtrak between school in Indiana and Chicago. I still took it a bit when my youngest was little, but we started having those long delays for passing freights. Given that the folks are still up that way, I have to get a Chicago fix every once in awhile and I hate driving anything longer than two hours, I had to find to an alternative to Amrtrak and my car.
The best way to get to Chicago from Indy these days? Defintely Megabus. http://www.megabus.com Not much help for Doug in Lafayette, but its cheap, relaible, is an express with no stops until Chicago and has been on time everytime I have taken it. Much nicer than Greyhound. Much faster than Greyhound or Amtrak. The farther ahead you buy your ticket, the cheaper the fare. Most of the time less money than what I’d spend on gas even with three of us.
May as well chime in. Back in the day, my elementary school took a train from Richmond (IN) to Chicago during spring break. My parents, my younger sister and I took a train to Washington, D.C. about 25 years ago. I don’t believe that it would be possible to make either of these trips now, as passenger rail service is kaput in Richmond and at least part of the Chicago track has been turned into a bike/walking/running trail. My parents still talk fondly of taking the train to Dayton and Cincinnati to shop, go to the theatre, etc. What they liked about it was not having to worry about parking and driving in an unfamiliar city. Plus, back then, the service on the trains was excellent. But then again, they had to be at the mercy of the train schedule.
I’ll second Lori’s pitch for megabus if you are going Indy/Chicago. It’s one of those progressive pricing structures… the further in advance you purchase the ticket, the cheaper it gets (up to 1 1/2 months out). Recently booked a trip as soon as the dates became available. $1 each way (plus $0.50 handling fee each way). Can’t beat that. But *very* limited routes.
Trains are romantic (in the non-mushy sense), buses are cheap. Yet we have neither… sigh…
I too have ridden the trains all over Europe. Clean, fast, convenient, reasonably priced… anyone know how heavily subsidised they are?
Yes, the French railroad system is highly subsidized and 51% state owned.There are 180,000 public employees. Since 1997,due to a Common market mandate, the road beds have been independantly administered to encourage private rail service,but none has started up yet.To give area perspective, France is slighty smaller than the state of Texas.French high speed rail travel has been a government vision since the 1970’s and today France has exported their technology to the rest of Europe and to Japan,notably.The rail system connecting terminals and parking lots at O’hare Field is French-built.link:www.answers.com/topic/sncf
Doug, your analsis on cost is interesting ($30 to drive, $60 by train), but that’s only the fare you have to pay as a rider. Don’t forget that the fare is highly subsidized. If the full fare were charged in the way you fully pay for the gasoline to drive, the Amtrak fare would be more like $150. Only the Northeast Corridor pays for itself. Every other rail corridor in the USA requires high tax susbsidies to function. This means all of us who don’t ride are paying those who do. That’s an inequity in my book.
But I love trains, so I took the trains in Spain when I was there. ONE route for high-speed into Andalucia: Madrid to Saville. That was awesome. Two hours! Then, from Saville to Cadiz, half the distance of the high-speed route: six hours. The train did not go to Rota or El Puerto de Santa Maria, which is where we ultimately wanted to go, so we rented the car at Cadiz and drove the remaining 60 km. It was kind of convenient, kind of inconvenient. A pleasant experience for me, if not the whole family.
Sounds like I need to go to Spain some day.
I don’t know what the relative percentages would be, but I would argue that the automobile/highway/gasoline approach to transportation is also heavily subsidized. Roads are publicly constructed and maintained. A huge chunk of our military activity in the middle east can be viewed as an oil subsidy. I believe automobile manufacturers and oil producers also receive government subsidies.
This is a real good site—please keep up the good work and—
A new book is out by Kenneth and Mary Lou Reed about Railroad History. They worked real hard on the book and I love it.
The book is a collection of some of Kenneth’s experiences as a fireman on the Evansville, Indianapolis and Terre Haute line of the New York Central Railroad. I started firing steam engines when I was 18 years old in 1953. It is also a compilation of writings and history of the Evansville and Indianapolis Railroad.
To learn more go to:
http://www.klreed.com/
Thanks Deborah