Not Going to Portland Tonight

[akirlu]

So, David Levine is doing a reading at Powell's Books this evening. A reading from his very first published book. It would be very cool to go, thinks I. But Hal's working tonight, and a 6 hour round trip is rather a lot of solo driving in the dark on a school night. So I thought maybe I could hop a train down to Portland to catch the reading. Not a sausage. I would have to leave at 2:00 this afternoon and literally could not get back to Seattle earlier than 12 noon tomorrow. And that's only true assuming that the "optimal" trains weren't booked up, which they generally are days and days advance.

This strikes me as totally inadequate. I would totally hop a train to Portland (or, for that matter Vancouver) for a short weekday or weekend trip if the schedules were remotely cooperative, and the trains weren't packed to the rafters. The fact that the trains are packed to the rafters suggests that I'm not the only one. Why on Earth don't we have better passenger train service between Portland and Vancouver?

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Of course you probably know this, but it's because:

1. Even with fuel prices so high, it's still cheaper to drive, or at least it's perceived that way since people don't have to personally pay the external costs.

2. The relevant governments (mostly the state of Washington in this case) won't pay for the additional equipment.

3. The host railroad probably doesn't want it, since those annoying passenger trains get in the way of what actually makes money, i.e. freight. You probably could pay BNSF enough money to run the trains, particularly if you paid them to put in more tracks, but that just raises the capital costs (see item 2).

In case it's not obvious, I wish we had a real train service in that corridor, too. I fear that the high first costs will continue to keep us from expanding sensible rail service, and the USA will continue to limp along with third-world service. This is particularly annoying to me after having visited countries with sensible service like the UK and Japan. And if McCain should manage to win the Presidency, we can expect further cuts, as he's openly anti-rail.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, Obama seems to be interested in building infrastructure, so if he gets elected, maybe we'll see more federal investment in rail. The confluence of raising oil prices and the need to combat climate change may push things in that direction. (Okay, so I'm a dreamer.)

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

We deserve shiny zoom.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Having been on both of those (counting Eurostar as TGV), I have to agree. On my trip to Japan, I had reason to ride a Shinkansen from Hakata to its first stop up the line, roughly the equivalent of Portland-Salem in distance (67 km). It took less than seventeen minutes. We barely had time to eat the pork rolls we'd bought at Hakata before we were pulling in to Kokura.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I googled, and you have the Chinatown buses like the east coast. Too late now, but maybe it would work another time. I've heard from a lot of people who've taken them, and they've said they're fine (and cheap).

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

"Chinatown buses"?

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Very inexpensive very nice passenger buses that go from the Chinatown in one city to the Chinatown in the other.

Hmmm, and the one from Seattle only goes north. We have a lot more on this coast. Here's an article on it.

[davidlevine]

Thanks for thinking about it, anyway.

I'd love to do a reading in Seattle. Do you have contact info for Dwayne?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I don't have Dwayne's contact info immediately to hand, but I feel certain I can hunt it down for you.

[samildanach.livejournal.com]

And consider that with the Cascades, we're doing considerably better than the rest of the country (excepting the Northeast Corridor).

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Aw, now you're just trying to depress me.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The NEC is probably the only place where there's a really intensive service, although as I recall there are actually more trains between Oakland and Sacramento than between NYC and Boston. The Capitol Corridor (Sacramento-Oakland-San Jose) is much better than things were twenty years ago, but I have certain fears that the entire service is dependent upon the dedicated management of their GM, and he won't live forever.

(I am thoroughly impressed by the CC's GM. When you send e-mails to their "contact us" address, he gets copies of them, and like as not, he'll answer them himself. I once wrote to him about a broken ticket machine in Fremont/Centerville, and within a few minutes got a reply from him, written on his Blackberry while attending the American Public Transit Association conference, copied to the relevant people responsible for fixing things. He really cares about his job. I've met him a couple of times and shook his hand, thanking him for caring and for doing.)

Things are improving in notoriously car-centric Southern California, between Metrolink and Pacific Surfliner services. Chicago also has an intensive rail transit system. I'd have to say that the Cascade Corridor probably ranks next after that, making it probably the fifth-best region in the USA. But you're right that this shows just how anemic things are elsewhere.