The Embarrassment of AMTRAK

I boarded the AMTRAK Vermonter in Montpelier, the state capitol, at 10:25 am the other day. Eight hours later, I disembarked, exhausted and embarrassed to live in a country that allows its public transportation to be the laughing stock of the world. And to think we put up with it. 

The goal was to get to New York City to visit my ailing father. But it could have been any reason, a business meeting, the Jersey Shore, Central Park.

I considered flying. American Airlines had a flight at 6:30 a.m. for about $250. Add the drive to Burlington International Airport, the early wake-up call, the cattle call commercial flight, the security, and the maddening Uber-taxi-subway trip to Manhattan. No way. To drive is also exhausting and perilous. Terrible traffic along the I-95 corridor. And what to do with the car in New York City. Street parking? A garage? Nope. Back to the AMTRAK website. 

$80 later and I am confirmed on the Vermonter from Montpelier to Penn Station. 

Mind you, this is a trip that in Europe or Japan would take about three hours. I would have been there for a late lunch after a cup of tea, a quick scan of my emails and some phone calls and a newspaper read. 

But in America, this trip takes eight brutal hours. 

You try to enjoy the beautiful countryside passing by and think back to bygone days. It works for a while. But by Hartford or New Haven, you are wondering how this country ever got to the moon or invented anything. 

You can’t really work. The AMTRAK WiFi is terrible. It temps you with service and then cuts out just as your business call begins. Cell service is the same. You start the call and then apologize for the bad service and hang up. Finland, Japan, France, London. Anywhere for crying out loud would have internet and cell service that allows you to conduct business. 

Now the Cafe car. It is less about a cafe than about the cheapest, worst processed food they could find, at the cheapest price, which they sell you for the highest price possible.

We traveled through tropical storm Henri with heavy rain, which proceeded to leak through the train car ceiling and onto the seats, laptops, and tray tables. It wasn’t just my seat. It was a lot of seats. College students, tourists, and seniors of all kinds just looked at each other with a resignation that spoke volumes. The staff handed out paper towels. We have come to expect this somehow.

The saving grace of this trip is the people. The AMTRAK staffers are great. Train people. They go back and forth. They know the regulars. I sat next to a French/Egyptian guy and we quickly fell into politics of the Middle East, Afghanistan, COVID, Bernie Sanders, Biden, Trump - all of it. No malice. Just a good old-fashioned discussion of world events and America’s place in the world. He runs a furniture design firm in New York City and commutes from Hartford two days a week. 

He is replaced by an Indian couple on their way from New Haven to Newark, NJ to catch a flight to Los Angeles. They don’t bat an eye at the journey, happy all the way. She is studying new styles of painting on her iPhone app. The husband is struggling with his frozen computer screen. Bad WiFi. 

In short, this is a disaster at every level. Taking the train means you lose a workday. No one enjoys reading the paper and a magazine and being out of touch more than me. But it is untenable for a Vermonter trying to do business in New York to take this train unless you are writing a novel I suppose. 

If this train took under four hours, it would be packed with people back and forth to NYC. It would bring New Yorkers to Vermont to spend their tourist dollars, buy homes and inject commerce into our COVID economy. They would get off in Springfield, VT, rehab a house for under $200,000, and go to work at the Black River Innovation Campus with the fastest internet in the country. They might go to Putney, or Dummerston, or Brattleboro and start businesses. 

But if you can’t get there in a decent amount of time, none of that economic activity will happen. 

Why does it take eight hours to get from Montpelier to New York? Let me count the ways. At Hartford, you change from diesel propelled engine to an electric engine. That takes 20 minutes.  In Springfield, MA, you have to back up after hitting the station to attach an extra car to the train. That takes 20 minutes. And something about a single track that requires passenger trains to wait for freight trains to go first. 

It is maddening and enough to make you wish to fly to Japan and China and enjoy their trains, or back to Austria to my college days for a trip from Salzburg to Vienna for almost nothing. It is almost as frustrating as the knowledge that Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, the most senior senator in Washington, cannot get fast internet at his home five miles from the state capitol. It makes a mockery of a modern country, of modern government, and our inability to move people from place to place in a modern economy. It’s embarrassing. 

I don’t blame AMTRAK for this. Sure they do a bad job with the food. Their people are underpaid. They don’t have enough money for new train cars. AMTRAK is starved for investment. Decades of lobbying by the freight industry and the highway lobby have diverted billions to highways for cars and trucks. Congress is all too happy to take donations from the America Trucking Association, while we suffer between Brattleboro and New Haven. 

I used to imagine a future with a train-loving president in which I could go take a course at UMass-Amherst once a week after a commute of say 90 minutes. I thought the infrastructure bill would fix all these problems. But when I happily chewed on that prospect, my French-Egyptian seatmate, who grew up on high-speed trains from Paris to London, rolled his eyes. 

“It’s not nearly enough,’’ he said sadly with the knowledge that countries like France have sparkling, super fast trains.

What is wrong with us? Why do we put up with this?

As the Sundance Kid said to Butch Cassidy in the great film - and I say to our political leadership: “Do Something!’’