On a recent round-trip Amtrak journey from Washington, I rode the Northeast Regional, Downeaster, and Acela Express. I have had the pleasure of riding the Northeast Regional and Acela on past trips to New York City, but this was my first time aboard the Downeaster. When I arrived at Boston’s North Station, I was expecting just another ride in a standard Amfleet I coach. As I looked around the station, I noticed several cheerful ads proclaiming “Train to Maine - So easy, so obvious, so close.”
I found the Downeaster to be quite clean, and the crew to be very friendly. We departed from Boston on time. Shortly afterwards, an announcement was made inviting passengers to use the free Wi-Fi offered onboard. As I walked to the café car—which had an excellent menu, featuring items such as fresh fruit and clam chowder—I noticed roughly half of the passengers were browsing the Internet on their laptops. Wireless Web access is a valuable amenity not found on other travel modes (except some intercity buses) that could lure passengers aboard. I hope to see it on other routes soon.
As the train approached Portland, an announcement was made that we were traveling through the most scenic part of the train’s route. We were told that had the weather been clearer, we would have been able to see Mt. Washington in the distance. The ability to enjoy the passing landscape is an aspect of train travel that I am glad Amtrak is acknowledging. We arrived into the Portland Transportation Center, which is a transit hub served by intercity and local bus routes, something that should be a fixture of all 21st-century cities. Maine has truly done an excellent job with the Downeaster, and deserves a lot of credit.
On my return voyage to DC the next day, I transferred in Boston to the Acela Express by way of the T to South Station. As my train headed south, I saw a few people working on laptops using air cards, but far fewer than on the Downeaster. While the Acela is an excellent train already, Amtrak should make it a priority to equip the train with Wi-Fi to bolster its attractiveness to business travelers.
The addition of on-board Wi-Fi would help Amtrak to gain a larger share of the travel market along corridors in the Northeast, Midwest, and along the West Coast. Critics complain that the company has not taken advantage of modern technology. Wireless Internet, in addition to electronic ticketing – which should be in place at some point next year—would prove to detractors that passenger rail is not outdated, and can and will play a key role in our national transportation network, far into the future.
— Peter Roberts
Peter Roberts has been a summer volunteer in the NARP office for the past two summers. He is a rising sophomore at Herndon High School in Virginia. He reorganized our library last summer and has worked on a variety of projects this summer. We thank him for his work and his dedication to our cause. – Malcolm Kenton
The office of Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) has obtained a preliminary draft of Amtrak’s Congressionally-mandated study [PDF] of the possibility of restoring the Pioneer between Salt Lake City and Seattle. It presents a very conservative ridership estimate—even lower than actual ridership was when the train last ran in 1992—and says the new equipment and track upgrades required would take at least four years once the company gets the go-ahead from Congress.
A land developer from Maine went to Ohio to spread the word about the wonders that new passenger trains can work for local economies. He touted the fact that every dollar his home state put in to initiating and operating the Downeaster has brought about $70 in additional construction investment, creating 18,000 new jobs. He thinks Ohio’s 3-C corridor could do the same.
A Washington Postreview of Green Metropolis by David Owen, which has just been added to the NARP Bookstore on Amazon.com, emphasizes Owen’s strongest point about the consequences of overreliance on the automobile: “The real problem with cars is not that they don’t get enough miles to the gallon, it’s that they make it too easy for people to spread out, encouraging forms of development that are inherently wasteful and damaging.” This is something NARP has been pointing out for years, even when doing so puts us in the minority of green-minded groups.
Phoenix’s 9-month-old light rail line is converting skeptics—and bucking the national trend—by carrying almost 7,000 more daily riders than projected, the vast majority being leisure riders, reports the New York Times. In most cities, 60 percent or more of transit users are commuters, but only 29% of Phoenix light rail riders take it to work and back. It goes to show how well transit can work, even in a metropolis that is practically the epitome of sprawl.
A Philadelphia Inquirer article paints a not-so-pretty picture of the condition of Amtrak-owned infrastructure, which the company revealed only after government watchdogs threatened to file suit. Several bridges on the Northeast and Keystone corridors have been rated “poor” by Amtrak’s own inspectors, showing such overt signs of decay as corroded beams, holes, and trees growing through cracks. The these pieces of the physical plant remain neglected, the more it’s going to cost, in terms of safety as well as dollars.
Amtrak adds a new city to its list of destinations this week with the reopening of Icicle Station in Leavenworth, Washington, which will be served daily by the Empire Builder’s Seattle section.
LCL: A preprogrammed “Balanced Transportation Analyzer” (Excel file) gives you the chance to play policymaker and come up with a plan to ease congestion in the Big Apple. * * * Thomas Friedman says US lawmakers don’t have the guts to raise the gas tax. * * * A video high-speed rail wish from a future rail advocacy leader. * * * A slight setback for Tar Heel travelers: a new Raleigh-Charlotte train will come, but not until early next year. * * * There’s one industrialized country the United States appears to be a few steps ahead of on high-speed rail: our neighbor to the north.
The first installment of an occasional blog feature reporting interesting news from NARP’s state-level cousins.
Maine: Gov. John Baldacci (D) presented a strong vision for the future of passenger trains in his state in the pages of TrainRiders/Northeast’s Summer 2009 issue of TrainRider. The Governor’s statement acknowledges the advocacy group’s hard work, calling it a “critical force in the December 2001 commencement of the Downeaster service.” “Without TrainRiders, there would be no Downeaster,” he proclaims, “and passenger rail service in Maine might be a dead issue even today.” Baldacci, who has ridden the Downeaster on various occasions, announced the state’s submission of pre-applications for Recovery Act high-speed rail funds to extend service north to Brunswick through Freeport, and to upgrade track on the existing line to increase speed. He also promised to seek extension of the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ, pronounced SEE-mack) money on which Downeaster relies, and noted the legislation he signed to dedicate half of the revenues from the state’s car rental tax to an account for non-highway transportation projects. “I understand that all modes of transportation, including road, aid and water travel, require government subsidies to continue in operation,” Baldacci explains. “Passenger rail is no different, and should be treated no differently.”
New York: A bill has been introduced in the New York state legislature to establish a state Rail Authority, reports the Empire State Passengers Association in The ESPA Express (July/August). “The new public authority would be independent of the State Transportation Department and outside the normal budget process,” similar to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an independent agency funded by both states that runs ferries, PATH trains, the tunnels and bridges across the Hudson into Manhattan, and the city’s bus terminal. The legislation intends the Rail Authority to be the operator of “an affordable high-speed rail network across New York State” and to finance incremental improvements to existing service. Funding for the Authority would come from a variety of public and private sources. Also noteworthy is that the bill stipulates that one of the members of the Authority’s 17-member governing board be “a member of a statewide rail passenger advocacy organization.”
New York: Also from ESPA comes news that the Finger Lakes Railway, operator of freight and excursion passenger trains in the west central part of the state, is advancing a proposal to extend Amtrak service to and from Geneva via Syracuse, using a currently out-of-service ex-New York Central line that splits from the CSX main line at Lyons. The company envisions an existing New York City-Albany Empire Service train being extended west to Geneva (home to 13,000 residents and two colleges), providing an early morning eastbound departure from Geneva and a late evening westbound arrival. Finger Lakes Railway will provide a station and overnight servicing facilities at Geneva.
New Jersey: Two major sports arenas around New York City, Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and the Meadowlands complex in East Rutherford, NJ (Home to the New York Giants and New York Jets (NFL football), New Jersey Nets (NBA basketball), New York Red Bulls (MLS soccer) and a horse racetrack), now have direct commuter rail service. As ESPA reports, the “Yankees - E. 153rd St” station on Metro-North Railroad’s Hudson Line, which opened on May 23, allows residents in the outlying areas served by all three Metro-North lines to go to Yankees baseball games and other stadium events without having to drive all the way into the Bronx, and has been well-used so far. Meanwhile, the Delaware Valley Association of Railroad Passengers (DVARP) announces that, on July 20, New Jersey Transit (NJT) inaugurated train service to the Meadowlands via a 2.5-mile branch of the Pascack Valley Line from Hoboken Terminal. Trains will only be run during football and soccer games, concerts and other large events at the Meadowlands, with a bus connection to all NJT lines at Secaucus Junction available for all other events there.
With Congress cutting spending left and right, one of the casualties has been President Obama’s high-speed rail initiative. The loss of $2.8 billion in funding is a major blow to the program.
The next few months could be a do-or-die moment for supporters of efforts to build a 21st-century transportation infrastructure in the United States. If opponents of improved passenger train service get their way, Americans will face rising fuel costs with few alternatives to costly car travel.
A Union Pacific crew lays new track in Illinois. Photo by Illinois Dept. of Transportation.
House Republicans’ proposed budget for the remainder of the current fiscal year contains no new funding for the federal High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) program, and rescinds $400 million in funds that had been awarded to Florida’s Tampa-Orlando bullet train, but were turned back by Gov. Rick Scott.
The HSIPR program, created by a 2008 law and capitalized with $8 billion from the 2009 Recovery Act, consists of grants awarded on a competitive basis to states, groups of states, or Amtrak to pay for capital projects aimed at making intercity passenger train service faster, more frequent, more reliable and safer. This includes building new world-class high-speed rail systems, as well as making meaningful upgrades to existing rail infrastructure and equipment to greatly enhance current Amtrak service.
The latter type of investment, often deemed higher-speed rail, is just as important as the former, as it is a cost-effective way of giving more Americans the choice of train travel. This builds the domestic production capacity and the train-riding culture necessary for the U.S. to begin to approach Europe in terms of the energy-efficient choices available to travelers.
The elimination of the program from the 2011 budget unwisely stunts the growth of a program that has already begun to prove its worth.
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