For the past several months, NARP has been attaching a survey to some membership renewal forms. It asks members to tell us how often they travel by train, why they choose to do so, and how satisfied they are with their experiences. It also asks how rail service should be improved and what the government’s top priority should be when spending Recovery Act funds. We tabulated 317 responses from members across the country in all walks of life. The responses reveal that our members are solidly behind the goals for which NARP has striven since its founding: fast, on-time trains serving more cities and routes.
75 percent of respondents people surveyed use the train primarily for pleasure travel with an additional 20 percent riding the rails for both business and pleasure. The train appeals to both types of rider precisely because it offers an enjoyable ride, providing unmatched ability for passengers to either to conduct business or to relax, socialize, read, sleep, and listen to music while en route. 75 percent also travel on overnight trains, which are critical to a healthy national network. Faster and more frequent service, on both short and long-distance routes, would be a boon to both business and leisure riders.
46 percent report being very satisfied with their rail travel experiences, but 48% are only somewhat satisfied, which suggests significant room for improvement. When asked to rank some of our ideas for upgrading service, the top three vote-getters were “new routes and services to more cities” (79%), “better on-time performance” (73%), and “more frequent service” (71%). Majorities also favored more modern equipment, faster trains, and improved food service. These priorities will continue to be NARP’s goals: more frequent and on-time trains in the near term, with additional routes in the longer run.
On the question of how the Recovery Act’s limited resources should be allocated, the largest share of respondents (85%) chose “improve all rail equipment and infrastructure,” followed closely by “connect all Americans via rail.” Given that stimulus funds are limited only to “ready-to-go” projects, infrastructure enhancement will necessarily comprise the bulk of what is accomplished. We will continue to make sure that these investments result in significant advancements in existing service that will reduce travel times and boost reliability.
Gaining a clearer picture of our members’ preferences and desires has elucidated our mandate to make trains an even more desirable travel choice for all Americans. But without the support and involvement a growing membership, we lack the strength necessary to get it done. If you are not a member, please consider joining for as little as $35 for one year. If you are a member, please spread the word so that our grassroots movement may continue to grow. Now is the time for the United States to join the rest of the developed world in providing safe, dependable, enjoyable and Earth-friendly transportation that frees us from our yoke to the automobile. All it takes is time, persistence, and strength in numbers.
A sampling of member responses to open-ended questions after the jump…
—Malcolm Kenton
Special thanks to NARP volunteers Peter Roberts and Joe Lyons for their hard work in tabulating and analyzing these results.
Real-estate experts acknowledge a shift is afoot, Amtrak raises expectations, and even more advances on the other side of the Atlantic.
The well-regarded annual Emerging Trends in Real Estate report for 2010, after a survey of over 900 industry experts, determined that outer-fringe suburban developments “have no staying power” and that all the smart money is being invested in transit oriented development and housing that is convenient to non-auto transportation, job centers and 24-hour amenities—showing once again that the kind of lifestyle that is most in demand can only be sustained by a strong passenger train network.
An Amtrak spokesman tells the Train Riders Association of California (TRAC) that Amtrak will make a “dramatic and bold” announcement on new equipment purchases in January, reports NARP Council member Jim Loomis. We should expect nothing less.
European countries are leaping even farther ahead of the US on the passenger rail front, writes Arthur Frommer in the Cape Cod Times. New high-speed lines are being built from Amsterdam to Brussels, Florence to Bologna (Italy), and Helsinki to St. Petersburg. Frommer also highlights changing demographics that contradict the low-U.S.-population-density argument, and plugs NARP’s vision for America’s future mobility. Meanwhile, British cities are organizing a push for escalated high-speed rail development.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood talks up rail at a major transportation policy symposium, saying “this Administration will not leave the future of railroads in this country to chance,” adding that he wants passenger and freight trains to be just as relevant to the US economy in the future as they were in the 1800s.
Once again, Ryan Avent says it well: “If you think there’s no substitute for the automobile, then the decline of the auto industry looks like running headlong off a cliff. But in reality, there is something just fine on the other side of the transition: a world in which people drive less and don’t mind it.”
The Midwest High Speed Rail Blog highlights two ways that passenger railroads are, and should be, generating more interest in train travel: by transporting popular sports teams and taking advantage of movie tie-ins.
A head-to-head comparison between living in Almeria, Spain (a country where trains have the lion’s share of the intercity air-rail market), and Milwaukee: in the former you see people out and about; in the latter you see an overabundance of “access roads, parking lots, highways and bridges.”
LCL: Light rail may be on its way to Monterey County, connecting it with regional rail in the San Francisco Bay area. * * * Take a ride in the cab of a Eurostar high-speed train from Paris to London, in 12 parts on YouTube. * * * Speakers at Wisconsin’s “Freight Rail Day” offer lobbying advice.
Solid majorities of American voters think greater investment in trains and buses will be more effective at reducing congestion, pollution and oil dependence—and enhancing our quality of life—than building more roads, and are willing to pay higher taxes for it. These findings, based on a survey of 800 registered voters in all 50 states and DC, were released today by Transportation for America (T4A), a broad advocacy coalition of which NARP is a member. In another indication that train advocates’ goals are broadly shared, the sentiments respondents expressed cut fairly evenly across geographic, income and party lines. The main reason respondents gave for why they don’t use transit often, if at all, is that it is not available or convenient where they live, not because they are wedded to their cars or averse to using transit.
Also from T4A: Despite the higher sticker price on housing closer to city centers, urban living is actually more affordable than auto-oriented suburban living when transportation costs are factored in, according to a Center for Neighborhood Technology study [PDF]. This phenomenon, called location efficiency, doesn’t just occur in large cities: it can be realized in suburbs and small towns that are walkable and oriented around transit nodes. This reinforces the message from a 2000 Surface Transportation Policy Project report, “Driven to Spend: The Impact of Sprawl on Household Transportation Expenses.”
Following on the heels of West Virginia, Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson (D) signed into law a bill mandating the state’s Department of Transportation to begin a passenger rail program, giving Kansas a better competitive position in the scramble for future rounds of high-speed and intercity passenger rail (HSIPR) grants. Another enacted law creates the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Compact, formalizing cooperation between Kansas and its neighbors to advance passenger service. This, plus federal grant approval announced last week, is aimed at making the Northern Flyer a reality. NARP congratulates our newest Council Representative, Deborah Fischer Stout (President of the Northern Flyer Alliance) for her tireless efforts to make this happen!
In a sign of support for an expanded long-distance network, two of President Obama’s nominees for Amtrak’s Board of Directors wrote Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) indicating they would press for refined cost estimates for restoring the Salt Lake City-Portland Pioneer. The two nominees, plus a third pick, have been approved by the Senate Commerce Committee and are awaiting a confirmation vote in the full Senate.
New high-speed train service between the central Chinese cities of Zhengzhou and Xian is so popular that all airlines have ceased flights between the two locales. The train takes less than two hours to traverse 314 miles (comparable to a trip from Washington, DC to New Haven, CT). The Chinese government is steadily moving towards its goal of having more than 8,000 miles of new high-speed railroads built by two years from now, a feat often cited by President Obama and other leaders to show how far behind the US is in terms of modernizing the national rail network.
LCL: Support for a major rail freight mobility project—with potential benefits for passengers—is bringing the governors of some affected states together, 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats. * * * The gears have been set in motion for the electrification of the Caltrain commuter line from San Jose to San Francisco—meaning faster, greener trains in five years—upon the completion of ten years of study. * * * Amtrak ridership from the 4-month-old station in Leavenworth, Washington, is 11% higher than Amtrak’s original estimate, with visitors from the Puget Sound area opting to take the train rather than drive to the Bavarian resort town. * * * Despite a host of other budget cuts made in the same bill, an amendment to withdraw $8 million in state operating grants to Amtrak was thankfully defeated in the Missouri House of Representatives. * * * Amtrak stations in California will soon get new electronic displays showing real-time train departure information and announcements.
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