Monday column - For your next getaway, make tracks to a train

July 14th, 2008 at 10:34am Thomas V. Bona

Amtrak is a great way to get around the country if you can tolerate weird passengers. Like the reporter on vacation who took mental notes about everything.
My wife and I recently completed our Great Ballpark Tour through Detroit, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Cincinnati. Our trek took us on two commuter rail lines, two bus lines, a rental car and three trips on Amtrak.
Amtrak was the most interesting, and most fun, part of the travel.
The best part was sitting on the Sightseer Lounge atop a double-decker train, looking out spacious windows through Appalachia. I attempted to complete crossword puzzles, but instead got into a long conversation with a guy who is a distant relative of a college friend of mine.
Small world, that Amtrak.

And that’s part of the charm. Unlike passengers on airplanes or buses, Amtrak passengers mingle. They meet up in the dining car, where the community seating puts strangers together. They bump into each other in the snack car. They talk each other’s ears off in the lounge (sorry about that).
On the long-haul routes, there’s a relaxed, leisurely pace you don’t get on airplanes. And with ample leg room and comfortable seats, long trips aren’t as bad as on the bus.
Some of the stations are kinda iffy (Detroit’s and Pittsburgh’s are bus stations with tracks attached). But at their best, they’re jewels (Union Station in Washington, D.C., is both ornate and full of shops and amenities).
The big knock, as always, is delays. Amtrak owns a fraction of the rails it uses, especially in middle of the country, where it jostles for position among freight trains. Couple that with some old tracks and signals and you have a recipe for trains hours late.
Some of my fellow passenger complained of the delays. One said, “They don’t know how to run a train.” Had I been on duty I might have told them to call their congressmen and senators, because it’s funding that’s holding Amtrak back. The government-owned railroad hasn’t gotten the kind of public investment that, say, highways and airports have over the years, and service has suffered as equipment aged. And when service suffers, riders flee.
Both houses of Congress have passed a reauthorization bill that gives Amtrak more funding, and some more power to navigate freight tracks and keep schedule. Hopefully, more money could mean newer and/or more frequent trains in the places that need them.
If those measures pass, it’ll be up to Amtrak to show how it can perform when given more resources. Of course, ridership is already growing as people park their cars and can’t afford the skies. Last year, a record 26 million passenger rode the rails and more are expected this year.
I hope to ride more. The “leisurely” schedule doesn’t work out for my next trip, but I’m already planting the seed of a train trip to St. Louis and Kansas City next year.
I’ll try not to talk as much.
Staff writer Thomas V. Bona may be contacted at 815-987-1343 or tbona@rrstar.com.

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