Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | S | Sierra

Trains, planes, & pains: what''s the best way to get from point A to point B? Amtrak''s high-speed rail takes on the airlines.

Article Excerpt
CONTRAILS SLASH DAWN'S ROSY LIGHT high above Manhattan. Headlights stream down the West Side Highway, and the morning's first ferry churns across the Hudson. I'm up early, rushing to a lunch meeting 215 miles away in Boston. I'll catch Amtrak's new high-speed train to Massachusetts, then fly home on the Delta shuttle. My schizophrenic itinerary has a purpose: I want to compare the two modes of travel head-to-head, assessing comfort, practicality, and cost--both to my bank account and to society, in environmental impacts.

Not many travelers--especially those on business trips--consider environmental effects when crafting their itineraries. Yet the societal benefits gained by putting green issues on the short list with legroom, arrival time, and quality of onboard peanuts could add up quickly: The kind of short hop I'm taking makes up 20 percent of all miles traveled.

In the 1970s, diesel trains sputtered between New York City and my North Carolina hometown. Leaning perilously on decaying tracks, they crept south past cotton fields and tobacco barns. Once, the engine hit a cow and later caught fire, extending an 8-hour trip to a 14-hour overnight. A few years later, a grueling 5-hour ride to Boston was ruining a budding long-distance romance. I gave up and hailed cabs to LaGuardia instead.

But recently I shot 345 miles overland from Osaka to central Tokyo in just 2.5 hours. Now it's time to give Amtrak's latest, fastest train a fair test. At 8:30, I leave Times Square. I could take a taxi, or one of seven subway lines to centrally located Penn Station. Instead, I hoof the eight blocks past shuttered theaters, claiming my $119 Internet-booked ticket from Amtrak's machine ten minutes later. Waiting to board the 9:03, I settle into a sleek Acela Express lounge. For the first time ever in Penn Station, I relax my grip on my purse; only ticketed Acela passengers are admitted to its Plexiglas-enclosed waiting area.

The room is crowded, a reflection of the fact that Amtrak's share of the Boston-New York market has jumped from 17 to 33 percent since 1997. I eavesdrop. Some riders are spooked by post-September 11 air travel. One man waves a Wall Street Journal article about how layoffs of mechanics may threaten aircraft maintenance. (Autos aren't so safe either--highway deaths accounted for 94 percent of transportation fatalities in 2001, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.) And how 'bout the weather? When blizzards lashed the Northeast last winter, Amtrak was the only thing moving. Between New York and Boston, 90 percent of scheduled trains soldiered on, carrying stranded motorists and fliers.

Passenger rail once thrived in America. The introduction of steam locomotives in the early 1800s inspired long-distance travel and settlement of the western United States. But in the 1930s, automobiles began honking their siren call. Railways running passenger rail were decimated by the Depression. By the 1950s, affordable sedans sailed down Eisenhower's new interstate highways. Finally, the rail lines unloaded their unprofitable human cargo when Congress created Amtrak in 1970 in an effort to save passenger rail service from the cost-cutter's scrap heap. Still, passenger rail has teetered near extinction as Americans continue to opt for jets or cars and funding for Amtrak remains insufficient to produce a viable...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!