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Amtrak and Bicycles: Time to Think Outside Those Boxes
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
John Henry
Special Contributor
It’s hard to imagine a more environmentally friendly marriage of transportation modes than passenger trains and bicycles. Yet as America struggles to conserve energy and reduce its collective carbon footprint, Amtrak has no provision for carrying bikes on many trains and often makes it difficult to take them on others.
As a result, the nation’s intercity rail system lags far behind its counterparts in Western Europe, where cyclists have long been able to roll their bike onto trains. Amtrak also lags behind the many commuter rail and subway systems in this country that now provide easy access for two-wheelers, enabling cyclists to travel long distances without ever having to set foot in a motor vehicle.
To be sure, Amtrak, which boasts that it “strives for greener passenger rail every day through eco-smart practices and programs,” does operate some trains with European-style roll-on service for bikes. But this convenient feature is limited to state-subsidized trains in California, Oregon, Washington, Missouri, downstate Illinois, North Carolina and on the Boston-Portland, Maine, route.
Cyclists in the Northeast actually have less roll-on service than a decade ago, when Amtrak operated three state-funded trains with bike racks in baggage cars. Those trains, which serve the Adirondack region of New York State and Vermont, have run without baggage cars for several years and no longer take bikes.
According to the railroad, states have the last word about whether trains they fund, like those three Northeastern ones, should carry bikes. Fair enough. But where Amtrak has full responsibility for bike policy — that is, on the many trains on its federally subsidized long-distance and Northeast Corridor (Boston-Richmond, Va.) routes — the railroad makes life unnecessarily difficult for cyclists.
On these routes, Amtrak takes bikes as checked baggage on trains that have baggage cars, but it requires cyclists to bring their vehicle in their own container or go through the hassle of squeezing it into a box provided by the railroad for $15. (Folding bikes are permitted aboard some passenger cars as carry-on baggage.)
Preparing a regular, non-folding bike for a box can be troublesome since it entails removing the pedals and turning the handlebar; cyclists must bring their own tools. The procedure is daunting enough that Amtrak’s Web site advises: “It may be helpful to disassemble and reassemble your bike before your trip to avoid any surprises. Some parts, especially pedals, may be especially difficult to remove.”
The frustrations of using Amtrak’s checked baggage service go beyond boxing a bike. Only a limited number of trains offer checked service and when they do, it’s often unavailable at many stations.
Consult the railroad’s spring/summer 2010 timetable, for example, and you’ll see that of the 15-plus trains operating in each direction between New York and Boston every weekday, just one has a baggage car. And although that train makes 10 stops en route, only two have checked baggage service.
At least that route has a baggage car. You won’t find one on the Amtrak trains running between Washington, D.C., and Toronto, or between New York and Pittsburgh, or between Chicago and Detroit.
I learned from the railroad that has a serious shortage of good baggage cars. Amtrak hopes to add more and replace its existing ones — the newest is 49 years old — under the fleet modernization program for which it recently requested funding from Congress. Wouldn’t it be nice if those new baggage cars included racks for bikes so cyclists wouldn’t have to box them?
The encouraging news is that Amtrak seems willing to at least explore the concept. Karina Romero, the railroad’s manager of media relations, told me, “As we begin replacing our existing fleet, we will take the addition of bicycle racks into consideration.”
For cyclists like me, they can’t come soon enough.
—John Henry, a freelance writer based in New York City, takes his bicycle on subways and commuter trains in the metropolitan area.