Category: default || By jt3y

I was going to go off today on a long rant about Amtrak. I have to do some traveling later this summer, and wanted to see if I could go by train instead of plane, at least on the way home.

I'm fully prepared for the fact that the trip --- which would take a few hours by plane --- will take me better than a day and a half on the train. I figured I could use the time to catch up on some work and maybe do some writing.

OK, so I'm making that up. I suspect I'd do the same thing I always do in those kinds of situations --- walk around and B.S. with strangers, stare out the window aimlessly, nap and read. But you could do worse with a day's vacation, I think.

I'd also be forced to change trains at Washington Union Station. But that's fine, too: I haven't seen Union Station since it was renovated.

Anyway, I used Amtrak's webpage to see how close I could get to the town I'll be departing from, and it looked like it wasn't very close. In fact, it looked like there was no service to that part of the state at all. Then I checked my April 1968 issue of The Official Guide of the Railways (what, doesn't everyone have one?) and looked up the same route.

There were no fewer than five daily trains between my destination and Washington, D.C. back in 1968 --- when passenger train travel in this country was in its death throes. (Amtrak, after all, was created by the Nixon administration in 1971 to relieve the railroads of the supposed burden of carrying passengers, which is why I get so amused when politicians talk about "privatizing" it --- the private sector didn't want to provide public transportation in the first place. But I digress.)

So I worked myself up into a fine, white lather of fury on Tuesday --- why, in 35 years we've gone backward! We're now getting worse service! If I can't get my choice of Amtrak trains to a major city, then what good is Amtrak? It's not providing any alternative, so it's time to kill it off altogether! Harrumph! Harrumph!

Tuesday night, I gave up on the lousy Amtrak "trip scheduler" and just downloaded a printable Amtrak timetable. It turns out there are two trains serving the metro area that I'll be visiting, and they actually both stop in the tiny town where my last appointment will be. They depart at about 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. respectively, so I wouldn't even be catching them in the middle of the night.

Um. Well, then. Maybe I can rant about the high price of an Amtrak ticket? Yes, that's it! Back to the Official Guide, where I see that the fare in 1968 was about $33, or about $182 in today's money.

The fare now is about $99.

Oh.

Maybe Amtrak is running much slower than the 1968 trains --- yes, that's it! According to the Guide, the trip in 1968 took 25 hours. The trip now is scheduled at 21 hours (though I suspect that it rarely pulls into Washington on schedule).

Well. Er. See, the thing is ... yes. Um.

I suppose I could complain about the crappy web interface that Amtrak uses, but that would be like complaining to the waitress at Eat 'n Park that my pancakes weren't quite fluffy enough. It's a fine hair to split. Thus did a righteous roar of Almanac indignation die an ignoble death on Tuesday.

So, um ... never mind. See you Thursday.