It just amaizes me just how many people are riding the Train nowadays. Which is a good thing too. I was just watching the Galesburgh web cam and I saw at least 15 to 20 boarding the Eastbound Train. Very few got off it. I guess the high price of gas must be takeing it’s toll. I must say that Amtrak ridership is way up. Allan.
It is a good alternative. I am planning a railfan trip which includes riding Amtrak to a destination, sitting at the station all day and then taking the southbound back home.
I’m sure the latest scare about the airlines has added to that total.
Every time I have ridden eastbound on that Quincy/Chicago route, a lot of just-released/paroled prisoners traveling back to Chicago get on that train at Galesburg. Also, some of those boarding were there visiting kin.
My wife and I took a trip from Madison, WI to visit friends and relatives in Lansing and Jackson, Michigan. At 3 dollar a gallons, the gas expense for the whole thing in a Toyota Camry came out to 80 dollars. The Chicago-Jackson train roundtrip fare for two people I guess is around 130 dollars – depends on departure time – and that is only for part of the distance, and then we would need to rent a car on the other end. And we would need to get to Chicago downtown somehow. Park in Milwaukee and take Hiawatha train?
All of Chicago is under road construction, but if you avoid the peak of rush hour and take the recommended alternate routes, maybe 40 minutes is added to the trip, mainly slower running times, none of it in bumper-to-bumper that burned up gas. The only thing about driving a 4-cylinder car is that Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan have split car/truck speed limits, the trucks are going legal speeds on account of the high price of fuel, but cars are going so fast that you either have to drive with the flow of trucks or risk getting creamed merging into the fast lane.
I looked into the Milwaukee-Muskegon Lake Express. You can take your car for extra expense, or you can park your car at one end and rent a car at the other terminal. If there are arrangements to get a car rental pickup at other than the major Amtrak terminals, I didn’t see any information on such a thing. I am told Milwaukee Amtrak parking is “better get there early.” Is there parking at a Northwest Metra stop (say Arlington Raceway or someother place) where one can park an leave a car for a few days and take Metra to Amtrak in Chicago? Can a person walk between Ogilvie Center and Union Station or is a cab ride recommended?
Part of the point is that living in Madison, I am not really served by Amtrak and that I had Amtrak service I would consider it as an alternative. The other point is that I just don’t get Amtrak as an alternative to high
Don’t forget, airplanes are the biggest “life” bang for the buck in the US - in Mumbai, Madrid, and London, trains (and buses) were the target - also in Japan, with the Aum Shinrikyu bunch.
As much as I love trains, I have only been a position twice to actually take the train to work. Living in one suburb and working in another, as most people do, requires a trip all the way to the center of town and back out again to get where you need to go (if the trains go anywhere near the start/end of your trip). I’m sure this has been discussed to death elsewhere, but Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers have left their mark on society, and there’s no going back to trains now (just like there’s no going back to canals after the railroads put them out of business).
One thing I might want to add is that there is a big difference between now and the gas situation in the middle and late 1970’s. Back then it wasn’t so much that gas got expensive because the 1970’s were times of inflation and everything was expensive. The problem is that you couldn’t get gas at times, or you had to queue up in long lines.
One of the motivations for Amtrak as an alternative to driving back in the day is that if you weren’t sure you could even get gas, a train was a mighty fine thing. These days, with possible exceptions of hurricanes and the like, you can get as much gas as you want if you are willing to pay for it. Not everyone has a fuel-efficient car, but a lot of us have cars that get double the mileage of what you could get in the early 1970’s. High gas prices are unpleasant, but I don’t see people being driven from their cars.
Here in my neck of Florida, it’s funny to see how quickly the big SUV’s are being traded in for medium or full sized cars. Car lots are full of SUVs that are selling at lower prices than just 2 years ago. My wife’s cousin Bill spends over $100 to gas up his Hummer! YIPES!
Amtrak, as usual, has been running with loaded trains here. I wish they’d bring the Silver Meteor back to Tampa.
But outside the corridors, Amtrak ridership is still not that significant. It all goes back to the fact that frequent and top-notch passenger service is only available when freight isn’t sharing the rails being used by the passenger service. And it pretty much is limited to shorter runs of 4 hours or less–which might now extend to 5 hours the way airport security is headed. Plus, the Federal Government hasn’t operated successfully what Amtrak is now let alone expand it. That’s not going to change as long as the Senators and Representatives will only vote for Amtrak provided at least one passenger train a day comes through their district or state.