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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Are gas costs driving you to rethink train travel?
Is there a tipping point that could put you on the rails for your next trip?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The British love their trains so much they created a hobby out of “trainspotting”. Europeans and the Japanese have high-speed rails to dart their riders from one city to the next. While train travel is ingrained in their 21st century cultures, it remains for many Americans a throwback to the1800s.
I’ll admit it. When someone mentions American train travel, the first image that pops in my mind is that of a big iron horse chugging 19th century masses westward to their manifest destiny. I might think of people riding the rails during the Great Depression; or hazy images of my parents as children en route from Atlanta to Augusta with my glove-clad grandmothers. Amtrak rarely even enters the picture.
I imagine most Americans not living in the crowded northeast corridor view passenger train service through a similar sepia-tone or black-and-white screen. It’s nowhere near Technicolor, let alone high def. That may begin to change as the price of oil continues to skyrocket, as Bob Dart reports in this article.
Even though I don’t naturally think of trains when I travel, I have ridden on Amtrak a few times in my life — mostly from Atlanta to DC and always when I had the luxury of time.
I enjoyed each trip comfortably in coach and sleeper cars, but the ride was always a diversion. I only saw capacity-filled train cars when I traveled from DC to Manhattan, and when my husband took the Crescent home when the airlines were still grounded following 9/11.
For so long air travel was easy, cheap and fairly uncomplicated. Car trips were also natural when gasoline was inexpensive. Train service in the northeast can take you to several cities in a relatively short time, but the wide open spaces of our vast nation seem to make it difficult to build the many routes necessary to make train travel quick and accessible for many Americans. We’re not like the compact European countries; we’re more like Australia.
That said, the price of fuel isn’t going anywhere but up. So, check out Amtrak’s routes, and then tell us…
Are rising gas prices and skyrocketing airline fees causing you to rethink rail travel? If so, tell us where you would go. How high do gas and air costs need to rise in order to tilt you toward the train? If you could add a new route, where would it go? Have you ever considered a vacation on the rails like the travel packages Amtrak has created?
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