Trains! They’re too slow, goes the refrain. Too old-fashioned, or too expensive in the case of their high-speed brethren. And yet, run the numbers, and you’ll find that Americans actually want trains, and want them bad. Even the slow ones are packing up with passengers!
Amtrak’s new Borealis service is a quality example. On the surface, it isn’t particularly exceptional. It’s a state-sponsored intercity train service between Chicago, Illinois and Saint Paul, Minnesota, passing Milwaukee on the way. It runs once daily in each direction, with an average travel time of 7 hours and 20 minutes. It’s a 411 miles run that operates at an average of 54 mph. Absolutely nothing special.
The Borealis is so much slower than air travel, you’d be forgiven for assuming nobody is getting on board. And yet, as Twitter account Hot Rails figured out, this thing is taking a chunk out of the airlines anyway! It’s early days yet—but these numbers are raising eyebrows.
Conventional Wisdom Is Anything But
In its first ten days of service, the new @Amtrak Borealis service between Chicago and Minneapolis/St Paul hit a market share of over 15% against airlines; there are typically 25 flights in each direction each day between the two cities. https://t.co/LAsFpgInM6 pic.twitter.com/vkqHtIyRcO
— Hot Rails — ????/acc (@hot_rails) July 1, 2024
The data comes to us from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, which reported an average of 604 riders a day in the first 10 days of the service’s operation. Even with 38.5% of the riders only travelling to stations on the Chicago to Milwaukee stretch, plenty of riders were relying on the train to get from Chicago to Minneapolis/St Paul.
As Hot Rails explains, we can compare those numbers to the most recent domestic air travel data from the US Department of Transport. The DoT records an average of 2019 passengers per day flying between Chicago and Minneapolis/St Paul. Even cutting out the 38.5% of shorter-haul riders, that suggests the train is hauling somewhere around 18% of the daily passenger total between the two cities.
To figure it a simpler way, if those 604 passengers all caught flights, it’d take four Airbus A320s to carry them all. Two trains replacing four flights is a win, environmentally speaking.
It’s a result that might feel strange at first glance. That’s a lot of people choosing not to take the plane, which would cover the same distance in maybe an hour. Of course, airport transfers, security, and all the rest does add to the pain, but the plane still comes out much faster than the train ride at over 7 hours.
Conventional wisdom is that rail links are only competitive with air travel over shorter distances. One graph is commonly bandied around, which states that high-speed rail is only competitive out to distances of 500 miles or so. Conventional rail, being much slower, doesn’t get a look in. But that graph assumes that high-speed rail is only “better” if it’s faster than air travel on a door-to-door basis. As the Borealis service shows us, people will readily choose the train in great numbers, whether or not it’s faster than air.
In fact, that graph is a bastardization of a graph from a British study published in 2004. The original was solely used to compare travel time between regular rail, high-speed rail, and air travel. It shows us that even slow conventional rail can beat air travel on door-to-door travel time for distances of 250 miles or less. It also doesn’t assume that speed is everything to the customer.
I've just published a new review of global air-rail market share, with over 200 datapoints for 133 unique city-pairs across 5 continents, demonstrating that rail begins to capture significant market share at travel times below 5-6 hours (not 3 hours as often claimed).
Short ???? pic.twitter.com/GxRo25Ilrw
— Hot Rails — ????/acc (@hot_rails) April 9, 2024
Indeed, as Hot Rails explains, the relationship between travel time and railway market share is more of a curve. When rail travel times sink beneath 5 hours, the trains see a rapid increase in market share versus airlines. This is based on data from city pairs all over the world. In Europe, the Paris to Brussels rail connection boasts 97.7% market share, with a travel time of under 1.4 hours. Training from Beijing to Wuhan takes a lot longer at 5.3 hours, but it scored a 52% market share of passengers in 2015 data. The train might not win 100% of travellers in that case, but it’s still diverting a ton of people away from air travel.
Beijing to Shanghai is a particularly great example, though, for how faster travel times boost rail market share. The rail route had 36% market share in 2000, with a travel time of 14 hours. By 2005, the travel time was just 12 hours, and market share inched up to 38%. In 2012, at under 6 hours, rail had 43% of the market. Fast forward to 2019, and the journey took just 4.3 hours. The market share versus air? A whopping 73%!
Longer routes can do well in some cases. Berlin to Stockholm takes 15 hours by train, but still scored 13.5% market shaer in 2022. However, underinvestment and ticket affordability can have more of an impact on these routes. Australia’s Adelaide to Melbourne route took almost 13 hours in 1971, but held 29% market share because planes were expensive. In today’s era of cheap air travel, the same rail route has just 1.1% of the market share, even though it only takes 10.5 hours by train today.
Ultimately, what we’re seeing with the Borealis service is a vote of confidence for rail. In this city pair alone, hundreds of Americans are voting with their feet every day, and they’re choosing to ride the Amtrak instead of getting on a plane. Even though it’s slow!
Based on the data above, it seems likely a great deal more passengers would choose trains if the route was even just a little faster. You don’t even have to build full-on high-speed rail to get punters on trains. Even just bumping a service from 50 mph to 100 mph can be enough to slash travel times and attract more passengers. There are real cost-effective gains to be had on rail networks across America, just by learning these lessons.
A Personal Take
Few trains are considered cool, outside of the world of high-speed rail. In reality, though, customers are just looking to get from A to B. Even if a train is slow and unimpressive, it might still be quick enough to be an attractive option versus the Kafkaesque hell that is a modern domestic airport. Some people like to get to their destination without the long lines, invasive scanners, and handsy patdowns from the TSA.
As a car fan, and a plane fan, I’m also all-in on rail. There are things I like about driving, and there are things I like about flying. The former is interactive and a pleasure, the latter is fast. But riding high-speed rail across China blew my mind. Less fuss, comfortable seats, and they put a KFC in just about every station.
Heck, I’ve even caught night trains across Vietnam and seen the value there. They’re slow as wet week, but they’ll move you great distances while you’re sleeping—and you get a lie-flat bunk all to yourself for the price of a hot dinner. Trains can do things that planes just can’t.
the trains in Vietnam are slow and loud pic.twitter.com/QvAmvc773B
— Lewin S. Day (@rainbowdefault) June 3, 2024
It’s early days yet for the Borealis service, and it might only be hauling an average of 600 people a day. But it’s a glimpse, and perhaps a promising example of what trains can do when they’re properly put to work. Food for thought, bureaucrats!
Image credits: Graph via Steer Davies Gleave study, Justin Hu via Unsplash license, Amtrak, Lewin Day
More trains now!!!
I’m going somewhere with this, bear with me:
Back in the 70s when doctors were studying the increased incidence of heart disease in Americans compared to the citizens of other countries, two suspects arose: fat and sugar.
Anyone who wasn’t paying attention then to academic journals only remembers the sudden explosion of low fat and fat free foods.
The reason: there’s such a thing as a lobbying group for sugar producers, there’s no such thing for fat producers (I guess no one ever thought that bacon needed lobbying).
The same applies to passenger rail travel in the US. There’s no one who will lobby for it. The owners of the tracks (that there’s basically no publicly owned rail tracks in the USA is one of the great mistakes this nation has made) are happy enjoying their rents from running long freight trains at 30mph. The airlines and airline maker enjoy their armies of lobbyists. States’ public works commissions and highway maintenance/construction contractors are joined at the hip.
There’s plenty of trips in the US that would be best served by train, but making them work is going to be like pulling teeth and undoing literal century and a half of policy.
You’re very correct.
China had the benefit of dictating policy from the top in this regard.
Europe had the benefit that it figured out the benefits of rail decades ago.
America doesn’t have the former and missed out on the latter.
I know this is anathema on this site, but rail is better compared to driving than flying. At least for me. I’m so done with driving four hours or more in one day. Especially in bad weather. Sure, rail doesn’t go everywhere I need to, but when it does, it’s my preferred choice. In fact, it’s even made me rethink my criteria when getting an EV for my next car. What will I need all that range for? I could easily live with a smaller battery pack.
One challenge here in Canada, and maybe in the US too, is the rail network is largely built for freight, so passenger rail takes a back seat in scheduling and has to often give right of way to freight trains. European and Asian networks prioritize passenger rail. That’s why they tend to be so much better for us peeps. It’s also why Ukraine struggled to export grain by rail when their ports were blockaded. There no no real viable freight infrastructure at scale.
For me, it’s really a case-by-case scenario, as I like to travel; speaking of Canada, I just got back from Toronto yesterday. So, looking at the options:
Air-I’d have to pay between $350/$400 to fly up there, pay for or arrange a ride to and from the airport on both ends, be there a couple of hours prior to the flights, and be restricted on what I can and can’t take with me or bring back.
Train-no go, as Amtrak doesn’t have a route from my location to Toronto, according to their website. Odd, because they show a line going there on the map, but it says it isn’t available when I select my city and that one.
Car-pay $50 to fill up, same coming back. Paid for parking from Friday to Monday, total was $36, so about $9/day, plus I have the use of the car if I decide to go elsewhere or beyond (though Toronto has a great subway/ trolley/ bus network). Can leave to go up when I want, and return when I want, no waiting or worrying about missing/catching a train or plane. Plus, I stop at the duty-free shop on the way back to pick up adult beverages, which would not be happening on a plane (I guess you can carry stuff on the train though?)
Note: I have taken a train once in my life, from Pittsburgh to DC. While I liked it, and the fact that the train connected with the subway once there, it was looong; it stopped EVERYWHERE, and the trip was the better part of 8 hours if I remember. I could get there in half the time by driving, so I’d rather be able to utilize that time better or in more fun ways.
The freight point s quite valid, the European network is built first to carry passengers, freight comes as a second thought. ( if there’s a choice between delaying a freight train or a passenger train, here the freight train will be delayed to let the passenger train move ahead and try to stay on time )
In theory the same thing should happen in the US by law but the tracks are owned by the freight companies (as opposed to the State for most EU tracks) and they never get penalized for doing whatever so they keep prioritizing their trains over passenger ones.
For me, it’s the fact that I can’t get a speeding ticket on a train.
MORE TRAINS!
I love the NEC and some of the long haul routes. I can get from DC to Manhattan (not EBF Queens) in under 4 hours, which makes it easy to super commute to NYC for a day for work.
While I agree that it does take longer in some / most cases, I much rather have leg room, be able to walk around, and not deal with the hassle of an airport (getting their early, going through security, waiting around, getting luggage, etc).
It would just be nice if it was a smoother ride. I feel more motion sickness riding Amtrak than I ever do on a plane. I can read a book, watch a movie, or work on a plane. I can do NONE of that on a train in the US without vomiting.
Yes! More train articles please…
Choo choo!
What a timely article. I boarded at the last stop of the Northeast Corridor -Roanoke, VA- on Friday at 620am. Nine hours later I stepped into Manhattan. The whole experience was great. The ride home wasn’t bad, though 9 hours at the end of your trip is a bit much. We usually fly out of Charlotte which is 2.5 hours away in the wrong direction. Roanoke is half that. I am going to start pricing the same trip flying out of Roanoke as the time sink is significant, but avoiding the airport altogether was NICE.
The sandwich offerings were mediocre at best. Lesson learned – next time we’ll pack sandos from home for the departure and grab shawarma for the return.
Always bring your own food/drinks. The offerings on the train are gas station quality. Also, just as on a plane, don’t trust the ice.
Emeryville to Chicago had decent food until they ran out of the better dishes somewhere between Nebraska and Iowa.
I pass by the Amtrak platform daily, and, while I’m glad to have the service here, the area is a bit lacking in amenities. Not even a wind shelter I can see.
I was a bit surprised at that. But you can sit in your car until the train comes. Parking in a slightly farther garage is no cheaper. I love that they’re talking about taking it to Bristol, which would mean a stop somewhere closer to me on the way.
I suspect it will probably be completed 20 years after I am 6 feet under.
Like many cities, there have been issues with unhoused people in that area, so I suspect that’s why no shelters. I heard talk about extending it to Christiansburg recently, and I’m all for it Take it all the way to Bristol: hopefully that would mean a few less cars on 81
Thanks for plugging night trains and regular-speed rail! The new Amtrak trains are capable of cruising at 120mph, but the track isn’t.
The overnight train from Chicago to NYC leaves at 9:30pm and arrives at 7pm the next day, averaging 40mph with stops. If they fixed the track and hit 100mph-120mph, the train could arrive at 8:00am and I’d never fly the route again.
I recently rode the train for the first time, between Baltimore and Philadelphia. I was surprised by the lack of security hoops to jump through, the trains were on time, and they were faster, easier, and less expensive than driving. Based on that experience, I am a believer, though I know are significantly different where the tracks are shared.
I will join the chorus of people who love trains. My career in New England was made so much more tolerable by the Acela. It’s such a pity our country has utterly botched rail, and only one tiny corner of it has a (mostly) functional system.
As a 13 year and counting NJT rider on the North East Corridor, “mostly” is still a little generous. Sigh.
I used to commute to DC from Baltimore on the MARC and it was great except when it wasn’t.
Chris Christie gutted NJT funding to “balance the state budget” for his failed presidential run and it never got fixed under Murphy so it’s been a long decline. It used to be the best transit system in the US before all of that and one of the reasons I took a job in NYC, added about 30 minutes one way to my commute as my train used to take 55 minutes. Now if I’m lucky it’s 70-75 minutes.
I take NJT weekly and it’s usually fine although when a mid-day meeting ended and I waited at Hoboken for WELL over an hour for a mid-day train I opted never to take NJT anywhere other than commute times or to/from Penn Station again. I take PATH to Wall Street meetings as it’s much faster.
(oops that was meant for below Thebloody – sorry!)
The Barcelona – Madrid direct service is two and a half hours from city centre to city centre, the trains that stop along the way make it in three hours and twenty minutes – still faster than flying, which takes time to get to and from the airports, go through security checks and board the plane. Trains are the future of short and mid-distance travel.
The trains in Spain have been my only high-speed train experience and I absolutely loved them. Security was a breeze, the seats were comfortable, and the prices were reasonable (even for first class).
I had previously rode commuter trains into NYC for many years. The price was acceptable with a monthly pass and I could sleep, watch movies, listen to music, or read during my commute. Still, commuting three-plus hours per day drains you after a while.
I will go to great lengths to not get on an airplane. If it’s less than 800mi or so I’m driving, no doubt. They’ve made flying such a miserable experience, you spend a ton of time busy AF going nowhere.
Probably doesn’t help that my job was 100% travel for 7 years and I’m crazy burnt out on airports and airplanes.
I did this same calculation earlier this year getting to Washington DC. A plane ride technically would have gotten me there ~1hr earlier, but the train was just so much easier. No security hassles, downtown to downtown travel, comfy seats to stretch out in, etc. Cost for the Acela high speed was about the same as a flight.
Another factor often overlooked is how your time is spent. With a train almost all the travel time you’re in the seat and can watch a movie, get some work done, whatever. Actual time getting on/off the train is pretty negligible. Planes it’s all security screening, waiting at the gate, boarding, baggage claim, shuttle to the parking lot, etc. A lot more hassle.
Dude my family took Amtrak to DC for spring break and it was so, so, so much better than flying. So much better.
I’m doing this trip in a couple of weeks and, even better, I live outside the city but can walk to a train station so it’s basically door-to-door from our place to our hotel.
Yep, that’s pretty convenient. I could probably do something similar with metro north but the station in New Haven has a garage right next door, makes it pretty easy to park and walk in. I’ve shown up 15 mins before a train and was still on the platform with 10 mins to spare. SO much less stressful than worrying about security lines.
I’m a fan of taking the train to DC, even if it is 4 hours on a clean, comfortable connector bus to a 5 hour train ride. So much more productive and/or relaxing than the 5.5 hour drive and cheaper too, for one person at least. I did fly (90 minutes flying so 3 hours total) to present at a rail conference once, but I walked to it from National and took the Metro to Amtrak back home. Amtrak was also an amazing way to visit home from Chicago during a break. My Metra ticket to the station sometimes cost more than a 2 hour Amtrak ride. That said, the system needs track upgrades and more across the board.
Driving around DC is awful, full stop. It’s not just the city itself but the whole beltway area is miserable, and getting there from New England you’ll be fighting traffic on the way anyway. After doing that a few times I learned my lesson.
Not unrelated, the Northeast Regional is one of the only Amtrak routes that actually makes money. It is great for getting around the eastern seaboard
The train is my preferred way to get from Washington to Boston.
You failed to mention rails biggest asset. When it says its gonna arrive in Minneapolis at 6:29 there is a very very high probability that it will. With the airlines you cant be sure you will even arrive the same day!!!
I wish. Amtrak is on-time ~75% of the time with host railroads causing more than half the delays. There are basically no consequences for flouting the law on passenger train priority, unfortunately.
https://www.bts.gov/content/amtrak-time-performance-trends-and-hours-delay-cause
Ok, I’ve posted way too much here, but it’s kinda my wheelhouse. There are lots of reasons for delays. The switch to PTC and Precision Scheduling mucked things up more than before, but you are always gonna have police activity (fouling the tracks, jumpers/suicides, medical emergencies, fare beaters, problematic riders), signal issues, weather delays, track issues, switching issues, single-track territory, mechanical issues on the consist, and on and on.
Almost none of it is from Freight saying fuck you to Passenger traffic. Each section of track is controlled by one set of RTCs, and they have final say along with the responsibly of doing things by the book, if possible.
No, it’s definitely freight train interference. The FRA statistics show freight train interference to be the main cause of delays, nearly half of all delays on all freight rail. See figure 5:
https://railroads.dot.gov/elibrary/fy24-q2-performance-and-service-quality-report
Freight train interference is a broad term that encompasses multitudes of scenarios. Basically, it’s anytime shit hits the fan in any one of the ways I’ve already mentioned, or in the many other ways shit flies.
It’s not freight trains taking priority just for the hell of it. That’s not how any of it works. If you ever look at an EMPLOYEE timetable, it lists all trains running at a given time, denoting meets and siding assignments, deadhead trains, freight trains etc. all down to the minute/interlocking/Control point/Block/Cat Pole number etc. It specifically details the order of all operations in an ideal environment. There is no “I was here first and possession is 9/10ths of the law” malarkey or whatever some people seem to think.
bummer
I bet the Manhattan to Niagara Falls route is dragging down those numbers. I’ve taken that train 8 times in my life. It has never been on time during any of my trips. If you take that train, always add 1.5 hours to your expected arrival time.
From the menu:
“Brandy Old Fashioned…………….$8.50”
Yep, we’re in Wisconsin, all right.
I recently did a comp on flying to FL and renting a car vs Autotrain. Flight + rental car + charge for golf bag = $800. Autotrain = $720 for coach ($1385 for a cabin). Overnight in a coach seat isn’t an appetizing idea, been there done that. Especially on a route noted for delays. Small sample, yes. Anecdotal, yes as potential usage/needs vary. $585 cost delta + time in transit = Hard NO.
This is the one and only train route that I’m interested in, so I appreciate the story.
Hopefully someday an express route with no intermediate stops gets added. The trip is about 6.5-7 hours by car. Getting real savings over that would intrigue me.
Amtrak can’t really can’t do that because the crews need to start and end their runs at the same yard/terminal. They don’t overnight in hotels like airline crews.
Can you help me understand what that has to do with it?
If the train is going from Chicago to St. Paul either way, what does it matter for the crews if it stops in Milwaukee, Winona, etc.? If anything, finishing the route faster would let them get home sooner?
Because there needs to be a crew change at some point. No commuter train crew works “in service” for 12 hours or whatever in a single day. They’d be making like $300k/year.
Don’t get me wrong, it happens and has happened to me several times, but it’d never be a regular job written in the crewbook to bid on.
Fine, then have just one stop in the center of the line (Wisconsin Dells or Portage) instead of 11. One crew works each half of the route and gets swapped out when the train comes back the other way.
Or just change the silly rules. If you can make $300K merely by working some 12 hour days, you can spend a few nights in hotels lol.
To your first point, absolutely you could do that in theory, but the ridership would have to necessitate it. It would be an amazing shift to work and would go to very, very senior crews most likely. There is an Acela route that runs similar to that on the NYC to Boston run, but there is still a partial crew change on that one. The Engineer and Conductor do the run, but the assistants jump at some point earlier to go back.
On point two, that ain’t happening. lol. Some of the labor rules written into contracts go back 100 years or more. The US railroad industry operates like no other industry in the world.
To the edit:
It’s not the fact of working a 12 hour shift, those are plentiful. There are rules for consecutive hours on active duty without “swing time” or “meal time” that won’t permit that.
Simply put, it’s akin to trucker’s rules, just on steroids.
Bring on the self-driving trains then.
There has been talk of that for 40 years. That day will come eventually (maybe), but there are a lot of reasons, when dealing with passenger service that it can’t be done right now.
I could write out the whole litany of reasons why, but that’d take forever.lol. Basically, there are too many variables regarding infrastructure and the human condition. Lawsuits, regulations, union deals, and safety reasons that prevent it.
Freight is a different issue, as seen by how badly the workers got fucked on their last contract. Freight service is more dangerous now because of it, and that’s saying something, as it’s a friggin dangerous job to begin with.
This is not correct.
Source: friend’s dad is Amtrak crew.
Please elaborate then! I’m not afraid to be wrong.
Everything I wrote is accurate from my experience as a Conductor on the NE corridor.
Could be a regional / route difference; I’m not familiar with the NE corridor, but at least here in SoCal, crews might begin at LA Union Station, do the northward Pacific Surfliner run to Goleta, turn around and run PacSurf down to San Diego, overnight there, and do the run maybe once or twice the next day, and end back in LA. Or on longer routes, like Coast Starlight, crews can start at LA and overnight in Seattle. But this is just what I’ve observed my friend’s dad do as crew on Southwest Chief, PacSurf, Coast Starlight, and California Zephyr. He overnighted (in hotels, i mean, though of course on the train too) on all of those.
So the train is about the same time as driving between those two cities? That sounds fantastic, usually it’s a bit slower because the average speed is below freeway speeds. Being able to chill out on a train and watch a movie on my phone, get a coffee from the dining car, etc. vs having to pay attention to the road for 7 hours seems like a no brainer to me.
It depends heavily on traffic of course (always a concern in Chicago). 6 hours or even a bit less is possible at off-peak times and with limited stops.
The reason it isn’t a no brainer for me personally (besides cost) is that I live an hour outside downtown Chicago and my parents live 30 minutes outside downtown St Paul, so travel to those central points is not extremely convenient. Total time door to door greatly favors the car. That’s why I was most interested in an express train that perhaps bypassed Milwaukee and had few to no stops. Get the travel time down to 5 hours city to city and I probably come out ahead vs. driving.
Two points:
And for some people the invasive scanners and handsy patdowns are precisely the point. I thought The Autopian was a no-kinkshaming zone.
I was on a connector out of Miami and for whatever reason there was a male and female TSA agent that were doing first come, first served. I got the lady. She wasn’t unattractive. It was pleasant.
I would pick a train every time if it was a viable option, which is rare in this country. The almost constant flight delays make them even more appealing. On a recent weekend trip I had an hour delay on my flight out and a 3 hour delay on my way home. Trains seem to be much better about running close to on time.
the problem is that our current domestic trains are regularly delayed, sometimes by multiple hours
That is awful, I’ve never seen more than a short delay taking trains in Europe.
Freight rail gets priority in the US even though it technically isn’t supposed to. It’s because we run 3 mile long freight trains and they can’t physically fit onto the side gauge on single tracked routes, so Amtrak has to yield instead.
I’m not surprised that this route is popular. It is probably a 3rd the price of an airplane ticket.
I used to take the Amtrak from Chicago to Detroit when I was young and poor, but I would not do it again unless the priority rules were changed. There is so much freight traffic through Indiana and I had multiple instances of sitting for HOURS waiting. On one particuarly memorable trip, I was on the train with large crowds of people leaving town after Lalapalooza. The AC broke and we sat outside Gary, IN for 3 hours. The smell was ungodly.
It sucks because I loathe flying. I wish this country could get rail right.
My understanding is that freight ends up getting priority because they own the tracks.
Federal law says passenger rail gets priority, and it has for the last 50 years. Freight companies have exploited a loophole by making trains that are physically too long to pull over.
Heck they don’t even need to make the trains travel faster to make them more competitive, they just need to work on getting priority over the freight trains on some routes. My mom has taken the Amtrak from Mineola, TX to Austin, TX. That drive would take about 4.5 hours going through Ft. Worth like the train does. The train takes over 9 hours. They have a long stop in Ft. Worth and are constantly going on the side spurs to let the freight trains by. If that train could travel at an average speed of 45 mph (lower speed accounting for stops), it would make that trip in under 7 hours. If they could hit a max speed of say 65 mph, and average 55 with stops, the trip would only take about 5.5 hours.
There are no better public transportation options than Amtrak from East Texas to the capital of Texas. Flying would route you through DFW, take just as long and cost twice as much. The bus station in Tyler, where she lives, was sold to turn into a hotel and the Greyhound station is now at a gas station on the interstate with no overnight parking available. The Amtrak is a great option for those who live along the route in Texas, it just needs to be a little faster to be an option for people who aren’t retired.
THIS! They don’t need to be super fast. Just make them somewhat dependable and on time
Same from Detroit to Chicago. That train spends a lot of time just sitting, because freight is the priority on the shared tracks. It beats driving in my opinion though, and who wants to have to deal with Chicago traffic and parking.
When we travel to large cities with functional public transit, I wish we could take a train from our midwestern city. We have visited Boston, NYC, Seattle, Toronto and Chicago and never touched a car once we got into town. Wrangling kids on a train sounds slightly less stressful than dealing with them at airports or driving.
I hope Amtrak is getting better. My one experience from Toledo to Albany in 2004 was horrible. The train was 12 hours late getting into Albany. The delays more than doubled the travel time. The dining car also ran out of food so everyone was hangry. The return trip was a lot better, we were only six hours late. I spent some time on that train talking to a big Amtrak fan. He told me about a trip he took that was delayed so bad (rail closure and detour), it arrived more than 24 hours late. The train that made the same run the next day arrived before him!
The reason this service is actually successful is that it isn’t stupidly expensive like most Amtrak routes and it also offers both directions during the day. On most routes outside of the NE you either pay more than the same route on a plane, or part or all of at least one direction is overnight because it’s part of a longer route. If the entire trip in one direction is overnight that’s one thing, but for a lot of routes that might otherwise be appealing you arrive or depart in the absolute middle of the night. These are places where a train route would actually be the only viable option vs driving because the cities are too small to easily or cheaply fly between. I’ve considered the true overnights occasionally in a sleeping car but those are just wildly expensive.
The other hard sell is that if you’re going anywhere that isn’t a major city or truly small town you need a car there anyway. So you have to take a travel method that is slower and more expensive than driving, AND spend money on renting a car at your destination. This is another way that Chicago/Twin Cities excels, since both have at least solid public transport although of course Chicago is better.
“of course Chicago is better”
Metra is a gem, very few cities have anything like it, or with as much scope.
I think we probably take Metra for granted, because I never consider the fact other cities aren’t similarly served. We have a Metra terminus in our town and it can get me downtown in about an hour. Once I took the Metra from here, into the city, and then another one out to the dealer where I’d had my motorcycle in for service. Cheap and easy.
Heck, Metra even goes to Wisconsin! I wish Metra had better service to my city, but Illinois residents don’t know how good they have it. I live about a two-hour drive from Chicago (when traffic is factored in), but I could beat that by boarding a Metra train.
Indiana too, but I think the South Shore is no longer part of Metra.
And the one Wisconsin stop that Metra has (Kenosha) was planned to be linked with service to Milwaukee back in 2011. However the newly-elected WI governor at the time ran for election on the theme of hating passenger trains, and killed that project. There are still talks about building this service out (KRM Commuter Link) but I’m not holding out hope for the near term.
I’ve taken the Amtrak between Milwaukee and Chicago several times – about the same time as driving between downtowns, with the benefit of no traffic or parking concerns. The challenge with the Amtrak route is the only Illinois stops are Glenview and downtown Chicago; KRM connected to the Metra route would give you access to the 20+ stops between the IL state line and downtown Chicago, including Waukegan, Lake Forest, Highland Park, Winnetka, Wilmette, and Evanston.
That’s a great point about trains not having all the security theater that planes have. The whole thing is ridiculous IMO. Why? Being able to bypass the most intrusive bits by paying extra.
I wish the AutoTrain was more affordable. I’d take that in half a heartbeat if it was a little cheaper.
A well-built piece Lewin. I love the “hockey stick” curve.
The problem with air travel is that in order for it to be truly the fastest, all of your ducks have to be in a row.
If any two of these go haywire, your time advantage starts to erode pretty fast.
Ideally, you’re also not flying in a Boeing.
of course with rail you are always subject to MASSIVE (several hour) delays in the middle of nowhere with no cell service when the cargo trains decide to take over the tracks
I’m not saying that all of your ducks are wrong, actually they all can be true depending on the sitch, but there are ways to negate a lot of them. Here we go:
1,2- Take an Uber
3- Checking bags has become pretty streamlined. Even better is not doing it at all.
4- Can be a pickle, but often isn’t depending on the airport.
5- This should never be an issue.
6- Always a factor.
7,8,9- Good crews will make up time.
10- Usually factored in.
11- Doesn’t really effect speed, more so comfort.
12- Luck of the draw there. True.
13- Percentage wise a very infrequent occurrence
14- See 13
15,16,17- See 12
18- See 3
19- See 5
Sure, every shitty flight involves a multitude of the things you point out, but compared to all the flights that went “fine”, it’s all a bit worry-warty.
Truth be told I’d rather drive. Since the 55 is no longer, you can make some real time, especially out west. And no need to rent a car! Plus you can bring as much crap as you want!
Exactly, this is the way…road trips are fun, you can enjoy your car, and don’t have to travel w/ the public
The great things about trains:
The bad things:
I’d add one more bad thing about Amtrak, which is that it can get delayed pretty easily on any routes where it shares tracks with freight trains (which is every route in my neck of the woods in the mountain west). We have more than once had people ride Amtrak to come and visit, only to get delayed at the nearest major station due to the lines being blocked by a freight train. In one case, they anticipated a 36-48 hour delay, so we ended up driving a few hours to pick the person up from the train station.
I’d like to take trains more often, but they are often not time- or cost-competitive against traveling by car or plane in my area.
I’ve only taken it on the Northeast Corridor where there are of course sometimes delays, but Amtrak owns those tracks, so nothing like what you’re describing. Also, the trains are electric, which is super cool.
I do agree that standing on the platform wondering if you’re in the right spot for a seat is peak travel anxiety for me. And if you want a table, forget it.
Pro tip: research the platform lengths of the stops before yours and which cars open on those platforms. Most casual riders take the first seats that suit their fancy, so try to go oppo of them.