akirlu | Not Going to Portland Tonight (Reply)

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?