Eat Pray Amtrak

Musings from a cross country train trip

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Now, the story.

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Waiting on a train in West Glacier, Montana.

We’re in the middle of the U.S. travel season. But as Americans make up for lost time during the pandemic, a summer getaway comes at a price: long lines, traffic jams, and canceled flights. 

As countless East Coast friends have renewed complaints about traveling, I roll out a common refrain (that’s met with inevitable eye rolls): You know, the Amtrak goes there. 

It’s not new that Americans fail to embrace Amtrak, the government-owned passenger rail system in the U.S., as enthusiastically as airlines or cars. For example, it takes only 12 days for airline passengers in the U.S. to surpass Amtrak’s ridership for the whole year.

Trying to understand why the U.S. passenger rail system is so underused, last year I went on a cross country Amtrak trip that I promised I’d never write about — after all, we have enough narratives about white men journeying across the country in search of America/themselves.

But because we still have the same carbon-heavy habits from last summer, and because I hate cars, I’m sharing my musings anyway. I promise to leave the Benzedrine at home. 

My Amtrak trip, from Washington, D.C., to Seattle, Washington, with stops in Cleveland, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Glacier National Park, Montana.

First, the Northeast Corridor, which accounts for 2,100 daily trips between Washington, D.C., and Boston, does not accurately represent the rest of the country. For those who live outside the Northeast, trains run infrequently, if at all. 

• Midwestern cities like Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and St. Paul-Minneapolis see trains once every 24 hours, and those may come in the middle of the night. Cities like Columbus, Louisville, and Nashville have no rail service at all. 

Second, train travel takes time. It takes 46+ hours to get from Chicago to Seattle, a route I got on and off several times during my trip. Medium-length service can still be comparable to driving (Chicago to St. Paul is 8 hours by train and 7 by car), but it really depends where you are (D.C. to Cleveland is 11 hours by train but only 6 by car).

Third, delays happen, though many trips are comparable to flights, especially as nearly a quarter of all flights have been delayed or canceled this year. But whereas people accept highway traffic and flight delays as an inevitable part of the experience, delays on Amtrak are too often an excuse to skip trains altogether. 

• And for those working remotely, working from a train, delayed or not, is a lot more realistic than working behind a wheel or in line at the United counter.

Fourth, Amtrak is relatively inexpensive, especially considering plane tickets and skyrocketing gas prices. The kicker is that sleepers cars are exorbitantly expensive, and because most people don’t love (or can’t) sleep upright in a coach seat overnight, such trips are inaccessible.

A lot of this on the North Dakota stretch.

Finally, all this matters because, you guessed it, climate. Traveling by Amtrak is 46% more energy efficient than driving and 34% more efficient than flying. But that only tells part of the story:

• A consistent, reliable rail system that addresses the above flaws can get more people out of cars and into trains, creating a positive feedback loop: More train passengers means more investment in rail, which means improved services, which means more train passengers, which means even more investment… 

With the bipartisan infrastructure law signed last November, we have an exciting window for train travel. Out of the $284 billion going into transportation, Amtrak will receive $66 billion, the largest investment in rail since the system’s founding in 1971. Out of that money, we can expect at least some of the following investments:

• Enhancements of existing routes and development of new routes, with service to 100+ new stations, including Phoenix and Las Vegas.  

• Intercity passenger rail service to many of the country’s top metropolitan areas. 

• A modernized Northeast Corridor, with improvements and repairs to bridges, tunnels, and tracks. 

Like so many other things we write about in Planet Days, greener options like trains are convenient and cost-effective — they’re just not normalized (or accessible) like the carbon-heavy and inefficient status quos. 

But with a shift in perspective, on top of the billions from the bipartisan infrastructure law, that can someday change. In the meantime, give trains a chance!