Remember trains? We do still have them in the US of A. Despite the constant scheduling problems and crippled infrastructure, I can’t help but root for Amtrak for hanging on in the face of our relentless car culture. So what the the Acela only goes from New York to DC thirty minutes faster than the regional service? We actually have something resembling European high-speed rail in this country! The first long-distance train I ever rode was the Amtrak Adirondack, on summer trips from New York up to see my grandparents near the Canadian border. I remember great views along the Hudson and Lake Champlain, and my mom unharried by traveling with rowdy kids since we were free to run around, not catastrophic lateness and poor service. Later on, after living in Europe for awhile, where near door-to-door public transit delivered me from trips all over the continent to my block in Paris, I couldn’t imagine why rail in the US had been allowed to fall apart. Thus, I was glad to read today that airport hassles and high gas prices finally seem to be putting America back on track, as it were. Ridership on Amtrak’s entire system rose 1.1% in the past year, with certain lines in the Northeast, Southeast and Midwest showing jumps as high as 10 – to 23%.

“Robert Mann, an airline industry analyst, says airlines drove passengers to the train by reducing the number of seats available for shorter trips and raising the “walk-up price” of tickets on their shuttles.

“The result is Amtrak becomes more convenient,” Mann says. “You don’t get the level of screening, if at all, in a train station compared to an airport.””

More good news: a transportation think tank at Rutgers University just announced a plan recommending that the Federal Government acquire the busiest stretch of American railroad, the Northeast Corridor between Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., which carries 1,700 trains a day. Currently all Amtrak trains operate on rails owned by freight companies, who really couldn’t care less about passenger service, or those Amtrak’s forced to maintain itself, though it has never shown a profit since it was founded in 1971. Next stop: a healthy, state-supported train network? Everybody get on board.

– “Amtrak ridership increases (USA Today)
– “Study: Feds Should Own NE Corridor Line” (AP)
– Amtrak