Riding the Rails

June12, 2006,
     After sitting on airplanes for two days, like a mummy in a casket, I took the Amtrak train from Bellingham, Washington, down to Seattle. It was an extravagant relief from harsh inanities of aviation. The train cars were new, clean and luxurious, very unlike the beat-up rolling stock on my usual Hudson River line (Albany to New York City). The seats were better than first-class airplane seats. There was a cafe car serving up hot beverages. The conductors were cheerful, as if they actually liked what they were doing.

     The view out the (clean) windows was supernaturally beautiful. Loveliness everywhere. The tracks ran along Puget Sound most of the way. Dark fir-covered mountains spilled down to rocky bays where, here and there, people were digging -- for clams, I supposed. I saw three bald eagles along the way. Also scores of some kind of stately, long-necked wading bird with a vivid black-and-white blaze on its cheeks. At other times we passed through farm fields and orchards. White and pink foxgloves grew wild along tracks most of the way along with yellow broom and phlox.

     As we got closer to Seattle, you saw more people in the bays, clamming, running their dogs, hugging their girlfriends. Almost all of them waved at the train as we passed, as if to say, "Notice how glad we are to be here!"

     When the train got to the station in downtown Seattle, it just stopped and we got off, without ceremony or painful delay. There was no standing around waiting to be squeezed out of tube, the way they unload an airplane. I caught a taxi outside the station door, and five minutes later I was at my hotel.

     This line along the Pacific Northwest corridor is one of very few extant passenger rail lines in the whole USA. There is only one train a day each way between Seattle and Vancouver, Canada and back -- on which Bellingham is a stop. The people in charge would probably just as soon not even run those trains.

   But why Americans do not demand to have railroad service all over the nation is one of the abiding mysteries of these crack-up years. What a pleasure it was to travel on that train yesterday. What an amenity it would be if people could travel that way between Cleveland and Columbus, or Atlanta and Birmingham, or Dallas to Denver, or Albany and Boston. What a drag it is struggling to get to the airport, getting processed through like a piece of meat in a grinder, and then struggling off to your destination once you land twenty or thirty miles outside the city you've traveled to -- not to mention the alternative insanity of driving a car three hundred miles, or more, whenever you have to go somewhere in this moronic republic.

Comments

[choochoocharlie]

Whew! How pleasant to read a post in which you're not "railing" against everyone and everything. There may be hope for us all yet.

[Peter]

Jim,

You rolled right through my town and didn't even stop for a beer with me?!

I have to agree with you on that Vancouver to Seattle ride. Stunningly beautiful. There was another great train ride from North Vancouver northwards up towards Whistler and beyond. Friends and I used mountain bike up to Squamish and catch the train back to Vancouver. I hear that service is now dead.

The train and bicycle are the two civilized modes of transporation devised by man.

[donna]

JHK, I've traveled by Amtrak in my neck of the woods--Michigan to Chicago--and it was convenient, comfortable, affordable and much more fun than any plane trip I've ever taken. I'd take a train again any time. If indeed a large-scale return to train travel is in America's future, that, at least, I would welcome whole-heartedly.

[AK]

I recently took the train from San Diego north to Davis, California. Although the ride was interruped by several "thruway" bus trips, it was still a very enjoyable experience.

Far better than aviation's first class indeed.

[Peter]

"Far better than aviation's first class indeed."

Flying has become an ordeal no matter what class you go.

I really liked this part of JHK's report:

"When the train got to the station in downtown Seattle, it just stopped and we got off, without ceremony or painful delay. There was no standing around waiting to be squeezed out of tube, the way they unload an airplane. I caught a taxi outside the station door, and five minutes later I was at my hotel."

After a flight the last thing anyone needs is to be forced to waste another hour disembarking and then waiting for luggage.

[communicatrix]

As someone forced to spend the better part of two days flying from a major coastal metropolis to a smaller Midwestern burg and now facing down a full-day road trip up the coast in late July, I feel your pain.

Wait—that's my pain I'm feeling...

[BigBill]

Jim,

I think the only real impediment to using the train is speed. I have ridden on the Amtrak from Seattle to San Francisco and compared to air travel, it took far too long. Part of the problem was that we had to slow down whenever we went through small towns; while it's pleasant to see the scenery, it took far too long (overnight--we didn't have a sleeper) to get to where I wanted to go. Even with the delays at the airport and the miserable flight there, it's faster to use the plane and almost as fast driving there (via car). I think if bullet trains, similar to those used in Japan and Europe, were used, and the price was kept in line with airline tickets, then there would be an inexorable switch from air to train travel. Cleanliness and ease of use will be significant factors in swaying the public, who are used to air travel.

I also think the price of fuel will have to go up dramatically before there will be a reconsideration of the role of trains in our transporation network. Slowly building up statewide infrastructure, then connecting those infrastructures with local transportation networks (like local bus systems, etc.) will help speed the process along. I am actually looking forward to the day when I can take a train cross-country, rather than being forced to fly.

Senator Murray, among others, has played a significant role in maintaining Amtrak service along the route you took.

[mr. x]

Glad you had a fun train ride.

[netkat]

really fries my bacon how close we are to actually having what JHK is talking about. Heck..the rails are out there, or even the remants of railWAYS, just waiting to be fixed up and used again.

yet many car-drivers are too busy having their Individualist Road Warrior Wet dream to even consider riding something like a train.

nk

[ben]

trains can be fast, it's just that the US is generally not as densely populated as japan and europe. lots more tracks per person to be maintained. regarding stretches like LA-SF though, i don't get it. burbank-oakland with southwest is a nightmare, LAX-SFO is a nightmare, jetblue out of long beach is a nightmare. the suburban traffic before getting onto the 5 on either side is a nightmare. these kinds of situations are made for high-speed trains, but it seems people are so in love with the mobile privacy and false sense of control and freedom (and safety - ha!) provided by cars that it has yet to dawn on them how cool it could be. just step on, step off, read a book on the way, or if you feel so inclined, get 3 hours of work done, or have a nice dinner, real food, real cooked, and good view, and quietude. instead of negotiating traffic (yeah, freedom my ass) and finding (often expensive) parking in a foreign city, not to mention the pleasure of holding on to the wheel for 6, 7 hours, eating crappy truckstop food (while driving, because the truckstop is so depressing, and you're on a tight schedule), while watching california farmland stretch to the horizon, smell of cows, struggling with fatigue, watching out for cops because you're going 85 just to catch up the 2 hours you lost in the traffic on oakland/burbank/van nuys freeways. or, if you took the plane, getting to burbank/long beach/OC/oakland/san jose just to get on/off, catching stupid shuttles, or paying 60 for a cab, or, if you're totally nuts, taking the 3hour bus ride from LAX to pasadena, changing 3x on the way. yeah. why. would. california. need. trains? we're number one already, after all, so why try harder.

i always felt that 'cars=progress/future', 'train, bicycle=past' is most popular of a mantra in developping countries, or countries that just recently caught up, because they associate trains/bicycles with the old days, when they didn't have plasma TVs and aircon. the united states is clearly an exception to that rule.

[Brendan Paull]

I moved to Japan a few years back and now that I have become accustomed for easy to use (though at times crowded trains). One of the things that makes me love Japan is that from the station near my house, though a serious of connections I can get to anywhere in the country on the train (and then follow that to absolutely anywhere by using the busses than fan our from even the smallest of stations). Service on some lines can approch a train every minute. The Bullet trains runs service across the country at a frequency of a train every 5 to 10 minutes. I have no plans of buying a car in the future. Why would I with this kind of service

The way I see is that people need to be given the option of something better. Back in Canada, in the suburbs the trains ran at the 10 a day in each direction and took the same time or longer than the highway (even at rush hour) and twice as long if the highway was clear. Why would anybody CHOOSE to use that train?

[A Tykhyy]

In the near future trains could be like this:
http://www.transrapid.de/cgi-tdb/en/basics.prg

[george]

With the amount of money we have spent in Iraq we could have built a wonderful national passenger rail system that would be in place now. With no deaths or maimings of anybody.

[Bill Roope]

It's strange.
I was just thinking about how cool trains are here in Japan and then I came to the comment above.
Tis true you can ride near anywhere on a train in Japan and if there isn't a train there is a bus. Also, I live in the suburbs outside of Tokyo and after a short 3K bike ride I'm on a bike trail on a river. I can either ride to Tokyo bay or out into the country. It's about 50K in either direction with almost no traffic.
I have never felt deprived without a car. I'm carfree not careless. Japan may waste a lot of money on needless roads, but it has probably the best rail system in the world. Trains are
late if they are 1 minute late and
they almost never are. It's what
the US could have done with the money that's going down the black hole of Iraq. Too bad it didn't
Bill

[Mike]

Morning All-

Nice post by JHK. I've always loved rail travel, and what he describes sounds great. I've taken a number of trips through the years from my native NYC to Boston or DC by train, and the experience is nearly always a pleasant one: nice views, interesting fellow passengers, relatively fast, no traffic, no gassing up, to parking. I'll do it again and again through the years I'm sure.

And this says nothing of the joys of traveling by rail as a backpacker in Europe years ago.

But when Jim asks, in the final paragraph, why no one "demands" rail travel, he knows all too well the answer: because Americans like their cars; they like the "choice," the "individuality" it offers.

And frankly, scoff though I do at that attitude, I certainly don't wanna live in a country where I can "demand" that others travel the way I choose.

* * *

Anyhow, for a brief excursion on what I *do* think about other aspects of consumerism, choice, and the weird reality of being a teenager in 2006 America, check this out if you'd like . . .

http://mikesneighborhood.blogspot.com/2006/06/sex-drugs-shopping.html

Enjoy.

[Cyndiluwho]

Mike, what's wrong with demanding that our tax dollars pay for rail service? Heck, they pay for road maintenance on roads I'll never travel.

No one is demanding you take the train, only that it be funded so it's a choice. Just like public education, even people without kids or who use private schools must pay for it.

[David]

Not really anything to do with the current article, but I think Jim Kunstler would appreciate Christopher Alexander.

http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0621,byles,73284,10.html

[bud4wiser]

Gosh JK, you've gone all "readers digest" on your BLOG and made the world seem like it could be a "better place".

Hmmmm.

I guess, there's no reason for me to get all-up-in-your face with "reality." However, for the sake of discussion, one or two "facts" should be delineated.

One -- currently, "passenger rail service" is relegated to the status of an annoyance which is mandated by the Feds to interfere in the least possible manner with rail-freight operations of the railroads in the US. That's pretty much why most Amtrak trip descriptions are likely to consist of horror stories regarding delays or other unworkable scheduling.

Two -- the massive infrastructure improvements needed to make passenger rail service dependable and scalable to the needs of a given population center will be competing with the necessary railroad infrastructure improvments required by the increased freight activity due to you guessed it -- PEAK OIL.

So there you have it folks, as Peak Oil drives freight business to the railroad transportation sector, -- it also assures that passenger rail service will be even less likely to become viable.

I love the smell of irony in the morning........

[Cats Pjs]

I have to agree with Jim. Rail travel is way more civilized than air travel. The few times I've used the train to get to Chicago and Toronto were pretty good experiences. Unless you're in a hurry (and invariably we almost always are) I'll take train travel hands down over air travel.

[george]

I don't know of anyone who "likes" to drive to work, the commute has become so hellish. In the northeast drivers would happily push their cars off a cliff if there were viable train and metro services available for daily commute and intercity travel.

[Sarah (Mrs. Irani)]

For our honeymoon, my husband and I took the train all the way from Washington DC to Seattle. There is no train service to Kauai, so we flew from Seattle to the islands. We had a splendid time. For our last visit to Michigan to visit family, we hopped aboard the Amtrak in Harper's Ferry- only a 20 mintute traffic-free drive from our place. We got on the train, had a dinner and conversation, read a little and went to bed. We had a sleeper car. In the morning, we awoke, took a shower, the train stopped and we hopped off. My father was there waiting to pick us up. We still had to drive 1.5 hours to my family's rural abode, but what a better deal than fighting airport traffic in Washington and Detroit- no thanks!

Michigan, surprisingly, has a lot of rail service, compared to many other states.

Go Amtrak!

[Will]

Jim,
As peak oil takes it's full effect and people begin to do without, one of the wonderful effects of this will be the slow down of society.

The fast paced hyperkinetic get things done yesterday ways will decrease and once again people will appreciate what is all around us.

What makes airplane rides so intrinsically evil; we are up 30,000 feet above the landscape and removes us from the beauty of the earth.

This single thing, to me, helps to foster the "throw away" society that we experience now. If people don't see the beauty and the effect of their waste upon that beauty, they certainly won't care what happens to that candy wrapper they throw casually out the window.

This slow down for our civilization will be the best thing that could ever happen to us.

[JungleWoods]

First let me state I don't know much about railroads and this is a homemade persimmon wine induced idea that came to me a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure it's viability could be shot to hell but I'm gonna throw it out there.

One of the problems with expanding the railways is an old one- Whose property is the railroad going to cut through and who/what will it displace? And someone suggested that the existing railways will have to be used for freight activity.

Once car traffic is reduced drastically because of peak oil, or maybe before- Take the Interstate Hwy system and make all the North and East bound lanes into a passenger railway system. The roadbed is already there, no one would have to be displaced. And the South and West bound lanes could be left for what car/truck traffic is left. Just an idea...

[Barry]

JW - persimmon wine induced or not, your idea certainly beats turning the Interstates into gigantic skateboard arenas. :-)

[ladylurker]

"As we got closer to Seattle, you saw more people in the bays, clamming, running their dogs, hugging their girlfriends."

Yikes, Jim. You do realize that "people" doesn't only refer to "men," don't you?