Fucking Amtrak. I thought it would be cool to take the train to Vancouver, BC from Portland, OR. Getting there wasn’t too bad, but there was no way to come back in the afternoon or evening. To spend a day in Vancouver you’d have to spend an additional night at a hotel and then leave early the next morning. How can you not have evening departures on a well traveled corridor?
I’d love to pop on the train and spend one day and one night in Seattle or Vancouver but there is just no way to do it. I don’t think it’s a govt problem per-se, it’s just that Amtrak sucks. They could sell the hell out of a Portland/Seattle/Vancouver service if it were at all convenient and reasonably priced.
I really like Amtrak, myself. Sure, it’s often slower than driving, and not that much cheaper than flying. But I like that I can get straight into urban cores, and that I actually get to see the country go by outside my window. Also, no TSA paranoia.
And, frankly, it’s just a damn civilized way to travel. Sitting in my big, comfortable seat, with a plate of cheese and a glass of wine while I watch the world go by - good times.
I’m planning a trip by train to Savannah at the end of the month - I’m looking forward to it.
The problems mentioned with Amtrak are obvious - they are starved for cash. Rebuilding web sites takes cash. It it sort of works, why change? A major overhaul of teh ticketing process takes cash - new computer systems, new printers, new handheld devices for the conductors, training and policy writing, ironing out the kinks, people to troubleshoot for the first few months. What’s there works as far as they are concerned and the government won’t give them money for fancy-assed computer systems unless they can prove a quick payback - how do you do that? That’s why most government systems remain antiquated and clunky…
And then it’s alphabetical by city, in the state. So for California you’re looking at about 60 cities listed. Should I be looking for Fullerton, Anaheim, Brea, Yorba Linda? My closest station could be anywhere in the alphabet. Cheap dating sites can coordinate by “within 50 miles of ZIP”, but Amtrak can’t. If they were serious about service, I could put in “Corona, CA” to “Santa Barbara, CA” on [date], and get lists of things that might fit the bill, even if there’s no Corona station. Show me trips starting at the closest station, then.
When I say government being the problem, Amtrak is bailed out so often that it has little pressure to actually do things right. I’m reminded of the train station I was at (I think it was light rail, not Amtrak) that had signs posted only for the end of the line city. Oh, so this line ends in San Clemente? Where does it stop on the way? Do the tracks and stations move hourly, making it difficult to get and display this information? The almost deliberate unhelpfulness makes my brain asplode.
You don’t always avoid TSA harassment on the train. Last January I took the Adirondack from NYC to Montreal. At Penn station, they were inspecting luggage and there was a uniform nearby carrying a machine gun. Presumably because it was international, although it is hard to understand the reasoning. We also had to stop at the US border for some kind of exit inspection (although they didn’t examine the passengers, so I don’t know what they were doing).
Penn Station is the only place where I’ve seen any sort of security activity, and I guess that maybe examining luggage makes sense in the Northeast Corridor.
In flyover country, though, Amtrak has no security. Park next to the station, next to the tracks, board without any screening. After all, with the thousands of grade crossings Amtrak trains use, it’s so easy to run a truckload of explosives into a train that any attempt at security would be pointless.
After all, there are a boatload of grade-crossing accidents every year that aren’t intentional. (Hint: the train always has the right of way.)
I’m with Mr. Excellent. If I have the time I much prefer traveling by sleeper. The train can be late, service can be spotty, but I find it infinitely more relaxing than driving or flying.
It’s not a bailout. Public transportation is necessarily a money-losing business.
Some might argue that air and highway travel are no different. Those arguments fall quite short when one realizes just how much the government subsidizes airports and highways.
How much does the government subsidize airports? Specifically, what percentage of the cost of the services used by a major airline at an airport like, say, JFK are covered by fuel sales, landing fees, rent, passenger parking fees, etc.?
Ah, yes. Some years back, Southwest Airlines lobbied strongly to scuttle plans for high speed rail connecting Houston, Dallas & San Antonio. Recently, My State screwed up & lost a chancefor Federal funds to help build high-speed rail here. (Could Southwest have been behind some of that lack of coordination? Damned suspicious mind.)
I don’t think Amtrak is stifling competition; here’s Wikipedia’s version of the story:
Back to General Questions territory. Before I saw this OP, I’d been at the Amtrak site to check out options from Houston; there are a few interesting possibilities. And My City’s Amtrak station is a bare bones operation–but at least has humans to sell tickets!
I don’t know how it is that far north, but if it’s the same as it is in California. . . unlike the NorthEast Corridor, out here Amtrak shares tracks with the freight trains-- and the freight trains have the right of way. I’ve heard plenty of stories of people taking night trains in California and spending hours sitting somewhere waiting for the freight trains to pass, and then being 7 hours late to their destination. It’s possible night trains aren’t worth it. If the freight traffic is heavy it could even be a serious bottleneck at the border, customs being busy enough as it is with the freight.
My overall point is that when the competition is removed, the drive to innovate and even be of service often fails. If Amtrak has discovered that it effectively cannot die, and the top brass effectively cannot be fired, you get mediocre performance.
Competition was removed because nobody wanted to run passenger trains anymore. Amtrak exists because Congress decided, for better or for worse, that the United States needed a national passenger rail network and has been subsidizing it ever since.
There is an evening train, it just ends in Seattle.
Strangely, now that they’ve added the second Seattle/Vancouver route, someone in Canada can go to Portland for a day, but it doesn’t work the opposite direction. Weird. FTR, I’ve never had a problem at the border. I have sat on an train in northern Washington for an hour, not moving. It’s incredibly unreliable, but I can sleep on the way there & I don’t have to pay for parking in Vancouver.
Sitting in my big, comfortable seat, with a plate of cheese and a glass of wine while I watch the world go by - good times.