Orphan Road

This interview in Grist has been making the rounds:

[The transit portion called for] $171 billion over the life of the bill. That's big money. That can make a major impact. It can make a huge difference in the capacity for transit programs. We are in desperate need of significant transit improvements. We've got to have the facilities and we don't today, and then we need the fare-box and economic policies that reward people for taking public transportation. Some try to say that it should be "self-sufficient" or have a certain percentage return through the fare-box. We don't do that on our roads, and public transportation is much better for so many reasons -- not just the environment or the quality of life. We should be providing much stronger incentives for people to use public transportation, but first you need to have the facilities.

I'm a big, big supporter of dramatic change in public transportation. It includes more than just the bus and rail systems in our urban areas. It includes a commuter rail and inner-city rail -- the whole gamut of services that get people out of their personal vehicles. I don't want people driving their personal vehicles the way they are today.

54 senators signed on... not enough to bring it to a vote, of course, but with a few more Democrats in congress next year, it could be a reality.

Nice article in the SF Chronicle about the intrepid souls who commute by train from SF to Sacramento each day:

The Capitol Corridor is a line made possible by the voters, who in 1990 approved Prop. 116 to provide state funding for intercity passenger rail service. Until 1998, there were only four trains each direction per day and the morning commute was essentially westbound only. Now there are 16 roundtrips. The State of California owns the rolling stock, Union Pacific owns the tracks, BART supplies administration, Amtrak staffs the trains and stations and a joint powers authority oversees it. The Capitol Corridor is like Caltrain with more layers of agencies.

Between four morning trains, 1,000 passengers ride from the Bay Area to Sacramento daily. Emeryville is by far the busiest station, with 135 daily commuters. They may be unhappy about spending four hours a day on a train, but they are less unhappy than they would be spending three hours a day in a car. By either mode of transit they are less unhappy than they would be living in the great Central Valley.

Read the whole piece for the stories of SF denizens who take the Muni bus to the Transbay terminal, then the Amtrak bus to the East Bay, and only then begin their journey. It reminds you how small the Puget Sound region really is. I'm sure there are people with 4-hour commutes here, but one has to really want to live or work far out there to have one.

Neal Pierce, writing in the Seattle Times, tells me something I didn't know:

But state initiatives are also vital. Wisconsin Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi heads the "States for Passenger Rail Coalition" of 30 state transportation departments appealing for an 80/20 federal-state funding split to put some real steam behind rail expansion.

Fourteen states, notes Busalacchi, already provide operating support for Amtrak corridor services — routes responsible for virtually all of Amtrak's recent ridership gains. Cascadia service (Oregon-Washington) had 674,000 passengers last year. The "Hiawatha Service" in the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor, he boasts, has boosted ridership 48 percent, to 588,000, in the past five years, with 90 percent on-time performance.

And there have been other breakthroughs. Pennsylvania, in a 50-50 cost split with Amtrak, electrified and rehabilitated the Philadelphia-Harrisburg corridor so well it now offers 110-mile-per-hour service.

110 mph! That's pretty speedy. You can read more about the upgrades on the Keystone Corridor Wikipedia page, or this page from the Federal Railroad Administration.

Now in just over two hours, with a new high-speed alignment to St. Pancras station.

Remind me why we can't do this in the U.S.? Can anyone credibly make the case that British and French engineering is superior to ours?

Amtrak clearly knows that one of the biggest advantages it offers over car travel is the opportunity to kick it while the countryside rolls by.

Now they're making the rail-travel experience even more appealing -- offering $100 in free booze to customers on a new, premium long haul intercity service.

Members of Amtrak's guest rewards program—the railroad equivalent of frequent fliers—can get a $100 per person credit for alcohol between November and January.

The offer of free drinks comes on top of the dinner wine that is already included in the cost of a ticket for GrandLuxe trips on the California Zephyr—chugging between Chicago and San Francisco—the Southwest Chief between Chicago and Los Angeles, or the Silver Meteor between Washington, D.C., and Miami or Orlando, Fla.

I can't imagine how the offer of some free drinks is really going to improve ridership on these cross-country routes, but you can't blame Amtrak for trying. At least Amtrak marketing executives understand that the only reason to take one of these trips is for the experience, and props to them for creating a marketing program designed to emphasize that.

Now if I can just get Metro to kick in a couple of beers for those days when the #8 bus is stuck in Denny traffic ...