Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
they were fifty or sixty years ago when they were the preeminent way of getting around. It used to take nine
hours to get from New York to Montreal by train, but now it takes nearly twelve. Chicago to Minneapolis
used to take less than five hours, and now it takes more than eight.
It's absurd that American rail is so slow. Japan can run bullet trains at well over 100 mph through densely
populated urban corridors. Yet even in the empty scrublands of New Mexico, our Amtrak locomotive won't
match this pace.
Somewhat embarrassingly, our train also won't travel on dedicated passenger tracks. From L.A. to Ch-
icago, we'll be rolling on rails owned by the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company—an
operator of freight trains. This is one of the reasons Amtrak trains move so slowly: Tracks designed for
freight don't have the kinds of railroad ties, road crossings, and signals that would be necessary for high-
speed journeys.
Why doesn't Amtrak have its own rails? Blame the automobile. The first cross-country car trip was in
1903, and by 1930 more than half of American families owned a car. We absolutely loved the things. Given
the choice in the middle of the century, we chose to invest in our interstate highway system instead of an
efficient rail network. Even now, as the government makes some noise about boosting efforts on the high-
speed rail front, most of the country seems to greet the news with a disinterested yawn.
Amtrak's modest pace would be okay if the trains were luxurious or the tickets were cheap. Neither is the
case. Our “roomette” on this three-night trip is costing us about as much as we were paying for a month's
rent in our D.C. apartment. And it's the size of two conjoined phone booths. By day, our seats face each
other, knee to knee. At night, the porter transforms them into a pair of stacked, narrow bunks.
There's limited dining car seating and many hungry people. Each time we enter the car for a meal we're
assigned to a booth we share with strangers. So far we've been placed with a young Japanese tourist, a
shy academic, and a fiercely right-wing retiree. We try to steer each conversation to safe ground: the won-
ders of train travel. We learn that the academic is here because she's scared of flying, that the retiree is a
borderline-delusional railroad fetishist (“I ride Amtrak whenever I can,” she says, “because it's always so
delightful”), and that the Japanese tourist seems to have been under the impression that American trains
are as fast and comfortable as those in Japan. (He's discovering the unfortunate truth. And he seems a little
bitter about it.)
AT dinner on our second night, the maitre d' seats us with a younger man and an older woman. They turn
out to be mother and son. Both are already drunk.
He's knocking back beers. She's sipping a tumbler of rum and Diet Pepsi. As our salads arrive, she pulls
a little plastic bottle from her purse, shakes a pill into her palm, and snaps a third of it off with her teeth.
“Valium,” she tells us, though we haven't asked. “I just like to nibble on a little throughout the day.”
“See, this is why I can't get a girlfriend,” says the son, apropos of we're not sure what. “And when I do
get a girlfriend,” he laughs, “she tries to kill herself.” We assume this is a joke, since he's smiling, and we
force ourselves to chuckle along with him.
“Oh, honey, I don't think she tried to kill herself,” says the mom reassuringly, downing another gulp of
her drink and chomping on an ice cube.
“No,” says the son, dead serious now. “She did try to kill herself.”
Long, awkward pause. “So,” says Rebecca brightly, “where are you guys traveling to?”
When they disembark the next morning (terrifyingly, they had shared one of the tiny roomettes), we
overhear two Amtrak porters gossiping in the hallway. “Did you see that mother and son who just left?”
one porter asks the other. “Mmmm-hmmm,” answers the second porter. “She done
messed
him up!”
Search WWH ::
Custom Search