At Least I Know I'm Free

One of the more reliable cultural generalizations is that (northern) Europeans keep their public infrastructure in good repair, while Americans starve the public sector of resources, since they don't regard boring public infrastructure as matters of national prestige. Hence the infrastructure crisis.

 

Amtrak, America's QUANGO public passenger rail service, is case in point. I book a ticket from Windsor Locks, Connecticut, to Boston. The primitivities began early. The posted schedule didn't accurately list the trains that stopped at the station. When I got to the tiny, amenity-free, unprotected platform, I met a gaggle of other riders, waiting for various trains. Since every train was delayed by at least 40 minutes, it was anybody's guess which train would actually arrive next. The trains themselves bore no distinguishing characteristics that any non-insider would be able to decipher. No LED signs, no printed signs, not even any hand-painted signs. The only way to tell where the train was going was to wait until the one open passenger car rolled up to the platform and the stairs descended, and the train conductor got out. At the stop I was waiting on, there was only one set of train tracks, and trains arrived going in both directions. This startled me, as it seems like an automatic, designed-in safety hazard. You almost never see this in Europe.

 

Once I got on the train, I tried to pay for my ticket on the train itself, which the computerized voice on the Amtrak reservation system assured me would be possible. Wrong! In the most highly-networked society on the globe, where even (especially!) the lowest of the low has a cell-phone that can calculate pi to the 1,000,000th digit, the national train company doesn't have the technology for on-train ticket purchases. The solution? I had to jump out of the train when it reached Springfield, run to the ticket office, buy my ticket, and jump back on the train, huffing and puffing. The conductor who held the train for me smiled indulgently. 'I just didn't want to delay the train' I said. 'Oh, don't worry,' she replied, it'll get plenty delayed all on its own.' And, in fact, we waited at the Springfield station for another 20  minutes, for reasons nobody could fathom. After that, we began to finally make good time. The train cars themselves are filthy and dented on the outside, and the exterior styling screams 1983. Inside, to be fair, they're actually pretty nice, with tinted windows, wide seats, and plenty of easy-to-reach electrical outlets. To mount and dismount, though, you have to wait for a flimsy, rickety set of extremely narrow steel stairs to unfold, and then crush yourself and your bags through an entry no wider than a birth canal. The trains shriek and creak and shudder endlessly, making it virtually impossible to write.

 

But that's only when they're rolling. Ours spent most of the time stock-still on the track. The conductor informed us that we were using a stretch of track that was owned by a freight company, and that some portions were only single-track. Therefore, whenever a freight car was oncoming, the Amtrak train would have to move over to the second track and wait, completely motionless, until the freight train rolled by. Because the freight trains, you see, always had priority. Yes, a train full of lock washers whizzed by, while the train carrying actual humans, who had paid large sums of money to ride the official national train service of the most powerful nation on earth, in one of the most densely-populated areas of North America -- had to wait. And wait. And wait.

 

As I write this, the train is already 45 minutes late, nowhere near its destination, and standing still somewhere in rural Massachusetts. And no, this is not a real-time update. You think these trains have wireless internet? Ha!

 

UPDATE. We rolled into Boston a mere 3 hours late. In fact, the delay was almost twice as long as the scheduled length of the trip. I must say, however, that all the conductors were extremely friendly, helpful, and apologetic.

 

 

Comments

[G]

I lived on the Northeast corridor and it runs quite well, except for snow delays. I meet plenty of snow and ice delays here in and around Berlin, so I'm not as angry as you seem to be. I am inensed that in a US where environmental consciousness should be important, the NYC subway is the least subsidized in the worl, we don't tax our gas to increase use of public transportation and in most cases, there isn't any adequate public transport (yes, Amtrak is adequate, althought more). By the way, last time I took a train in Italy, other passengers had to help the shorter of us climb up the windows from the train to the platform several feet above. We also passed our luggage up.

[partim]

In strangely related news, I took the train from Anaheim to San Diego two weeks ago (mostly because the day before I got stuck on the freeway) and is was quite a pleasant experience, by and large on a par with inter-city rail travel in Europe. Of course and incidentally, that line is being subsidized by the great state of California. So there.

[Tim]

I can't wait for the moment when the German government finally manages to completely privatizes public transport. It will be so much better then! The examples from UK, US and Berliner S-Bahn are obvious.

[xxx]

"Because the freight trains, you see, always had priority. Yes, a train full of lock washers whizzed by, while the train carrying actual humans, who had paid large sums of money to ride the official national train service of the most powerful nation on earth, in one of the most densely-populated areas of North America -- had to wait. And wait. And wait."

Now - that's a definition of capitalism I didn't know I was waiting for. ;)

[Anonymous]

A few weeks ago, you posted a rant about Frankfurt Airport. Now this.

You're right to vent your rage and frustration. Given the vehemence of your rants, however, I wonder if trains and planes are, for you, symbols of cultural thresholds. Symbolic moments in which suppressed doubts and anxieties about life as an American abroad and questions about where you belong emerge.

Your situation as expatriate and its implicit questions of cultural identity--at times exhilarating, at times frightening--makes you feel particularly vulnerable, threatened even, in travel experiences in which you are in a state of powerless transition. Or, rather, non-transition--You can't get to your destination.

[ian in hamburg]

This is why they call it AmTrash. In Canada the equivalent is Vile Rail. I don't know about AmTrack, but VIA Rail was formed when both national freight railways sold their passenger systems off to the government decades ago, taking an aged fleet of rolling stock as well as the worst of the deadbeat employees the railways had been traying to fire for years along with them. The Canadian government has been running the system at a huge loss ever since because they have to rent all the track space from the freight railways from which they bought it(!) The freight railways have no incentive to make sure the passenger trains run on time because there's more money to be made in making sure just one container in a trainload of electronic goods makes it to stores on time than there ever will be ensuring a timely arrival of a bunch of lowly human beings.

[Ferdinand Kleist]

eh I am in the us of a at the moment as well and just arrived in Philadelphia from NY also in an Amtrak train. It wasn't an experiment, I think it was sensible. Everybody else told me to rent a car or take the Bus. But renting a car for a 1 hour drive seemed idiotic and Buses I don't like. So I went Amtrak and I have to say the experience was great. Philadelphia main station is splendid if poorly signposted. You should definetly stop by there Andrew it will lift your spirits.

(Train was 20 Minutes delayed by the way).

[G.Neuner]

Now the question remains: why did you even try to do this? Was it some sort of experiment or did you really not think about what sort of reputation American public transport has? Have you been in Germany for too long? :)
Seriously though, after reading this I will be a bit less bitter about the DB than I was lately. Obviously I have been spoiled.

[Curtis]

Serves you right! Maybe next time you'll stop trying to be European and fly like every other American ;-)