CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => Big Ten => Topic started by: medinabuckeye1 on January 16, 2018, 10:31:04 AM
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Those who have been here for a while will remember Gator's write-ups on road-trips to various football venues. I don't think I can do that justice but I did always like this tradition so I thought I'd share one anyway.
For starters, this was my first time ever seeing Ohio State play a "true" road basketball game:
Rutgers' arena is technically named the "Louis Brown Athletic Center" but as near as I can tell, everyone calls it either the "Rutgers Athletic Center", or simply the "RAC" (pronounced as spelled, not R - A - C).
The nice thing about a trip to Rutgers (and the reason I went on this trip) is that it is only about an hour by train from Manhattan. Amtrack's NE Corridor line leaves New York's Penn Station (Between 7th and 8th Avenues and between W31st and W33rd Streets). This train leaves reasonably frequently and it is only an hour on the train to the New Brunswick Station adjacent to the Rutgers Campus.
After exiting the train station there are free campus buses to get you to the RAC. One word of caution, there are TWO Penn Stations on this route. The other one is "Newark Penn Station" and if you are trying to get back to the City you DO NOT want to get off there, don't ask me how I know.
For as urban as the surrounding area is, the Rutgers Campus is surprisingly wooded and ascetically pleasing. It is also a very old campus that has what I can only describe as a "what a college should look like" look about it. We didn't look around much for three reasons: First, we were here for a football game not long ago. Second, it was cold. Third, it was dark.
The RAC itself is surprisingly small. It felt almost like a HS gym. The Rutgers fans that we met were friendly and welcoming (in a New Yorker) way. We sat in the third row behind the baseline (for a surprisingly low price). At one point in the second half a Rutgers player was shooting a foul shot at the basket we were behind and I (somewhat instinctively) started waving my arms in the usual fan effort to distract the shooter. A guy behind me said "You don't need to do that to get him to miss" and the player promptly missed the shot.
After the game we took the free campus bus back to near the train station, walked to the train station, and were on the train headed back to Manhattan within a half hour after the game ended.
Penn Station, if you are not aware, is literally adjacent to Madison Square Garden and only a few blocks from Times Square. This is what makes a trip to Rutgers unique. You can stay in NYC and get a weekend in the City out of the trip. For those of us who are married and/or need to drag a significant other who isn't terribly interested in sports along on a trip, the weekend in NYC is the clincher in making the sale.
It was a fun trip, I recommend it!
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Did you consider taking the Amtrak from Cleveland to NYC?
My brother and his wife used to do that during summer break when they were mere College sweethearts.
They went to Richmond(VA), but she was from Poughkeepsie, NY and he was from Columbus.
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Did you consider taking the Amtrak from Cleveland to NYC?
My brother and his wife used to do that during summer break when they were mere College sweethearts.
They went to Richmond(VA), but she was from Poughkeepsie, NY and he was from Columbus.
To be honest I didn't even look. I have checked them before and the prices/times were ridiculous for a long trip. I checked for our trip to Nebraska and it was honestly more expensive than flying and slower than driving.
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Good write-up, always appreciate the travel stories. I chuckled at the 'Penn Station' scenario. Penn Station (the NYC station) is still a nasty place, I don't care how much lipstick they've put on it lately.
re: Amtrak. There's such great romance in thinking about taking a long train ride, but it rarely does make much economic sense. There are no doubt sensible segments of train travel that come to mind between certain places in this country, but once you extend the trip a bit further out, there's not only no value relative to air/car/megabus, but insufferable scheduling, not to mention some reliability problems.
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thanks for the write up
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To be honest I didn't even look. I have checked them before and the prices/times were ridiculous for a long trip. I checked for our trip to Nebraska and it was honestly more expensive than flying and slower than driving.
re: Amtrak. There's such great romance in thinking about taking a long train ride, but it rarely does make much economic sense. There are no doubt sensible segments of train travel that come to mind between certain places in this country, but once you extend the trip a bit further out, there's not only no value relative to air/car/megabus, but insufferable scheduling, not to mention some reliability problems.
Yeah, I did a look at this a couple of years ago. People romanticize riding the rails, but to be frank it's a terrible way to travel. As mentioned, it's typically more expensive than flying and slower than driving.
I looked it up back when I had lived in Atlanta, specific to what it would take to get to Chicago from Atlanta by train. Well, Amtrak doesn't go from Atlanta to Chicago. You'd have to go Atlanta->NYC, then NYC->Chicago. Leave at 8 PM on a Sunday, and you'll make it to Chicago at 8 AM on a Tuesday. That's 36 hours of travel, on two trains, both overnight, and according to Amtrak's current web site pricing, it's about $200 if you want a seat, but over $600 if you want a sleeper car.
That's about a 2 hour flight, or a >10 hr drive, or about 15 hrs via bus.
People act as if rail is great. And it can be useful. But it's not cheap or fast. And unless it goes EXACTLY where you want to go, it's useless.
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Yeah, I just figured that Cleveland to NYC would be a pretty straight shot, while driving across the mountains in the middle of the winter can always suck.
Throw in the fact that it was sposta be some sorta romantic weekend getaway with the wife...
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Yeah, I just figured that Cleveland to NYC would be a pretty straight shot, while driving across the mountains in the middle of the winter can always suck.
Throw in the fact that it was sposta be some sorta romantic weekend getaway with the wife...
I have to admit that on the trip home (Monday, Jan 15) we ran into the storm that hit the midwest about half way across Pennsylvania. What started as about a 7 hour drive (8 counting the hour of dealing with traffic to get from midtown to the GWB ended up taking closer to 12 hours with the last half of the miles done at ~40MPH in the snow.
That said, here is the schedule information (assuming a trip tomorrow from Cleveland to New York):
The train leaves Cleveland at 5:50am and arrives at Penn Station in NYC at 6:23pm. That is a bit under 13 hours for a trip that didn't take me that long by car even with the snowstorm. Plus, you have to get up in the middle of the night to get to the train station in Cleveland at 0-dark-thirty.
Here is the return trip information (assuming a trip Thursday from NYP to CLE):
The train leaves Penn Station (NYP) at 3:40pm and arrives at Cleveland at 3:27am. That is quicker than the trip to NYC but still longer than typical car time. It also has the detriment of arriving in the middle of the night.
The trips are $84 each way so $168 per person round-trip. You could probably fly for around that if you booked far enough in advance and you'd do the trip a lot quicker or you could drive for less than that AND in less time.
I looked at it for a trip to Glacier Park and the price/time were ridiculous. It was so much slower and more expensive than driving that I could literally use the money saved to pay for hotels for two nights and STILL get there quicker and cheaper by driving.
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My last 'rail' trip was a few years ago between Seattle and Portland (on the old track line, not the new one that just derailed) and it was at least 90 minutes longer than the scheduled travel times, which are already longer than a car or bus ride. This is always being blamed by Amtrak on the Freight Rails (BNSF) over Amtrak. (Summoning Froggy). This was tolerable for us, because we didn't really have to be in PDX on time and our kids loved the novelty of their first train ride, but it was not working for everybody else on the train.
Outside the Milwaukee to Chicago (Hiawatha line) and the NE Corridor, I can't think of anything nice about passenger train travel anywhere else I've tried, or explored.
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My last 'rail' trip was a few years ago between Seattle and Portland (on the old track line, not the new one that just derailed) and it was at least 90 minutes longer than the scheduled travel times, which are already longer than a car or bus ride. This is always being blamed by Amtrak on the Freight Rails (BNSF) over Amtrak. (Summoning Froggy). This was tolerable for us, because we didn't really have to be in PDX on time and our kids loved the novelty of their first train ride, but it was not working for everybody else on the train.
Outside the Milwaukee to Chicago (Hiawatha line) and the NE Corridor, I can't think of anything nice about passenger train travel anywhere else I've tried, or explored.
Marq:
Your experiences with Amtrack concern me because I have a long-term plan to do a hike in Glacier Park that involves taking the train from West Glacier (WGL) to East Glacier (GPK). The trip would be beautiful. The track basically runs along the Middle Fork of the Flathead River along with US Route 2 from the Station at West Glacier (Near Apgar) to a station across the street from Glacier Park Lodge. I drove that on my last trip to Glacier. Google says 63 minutes driving (https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Apgar+Village+Lodge/Glacier+Park+Lodge,+499+MT-49,+East+Glacier+Park,+MT+59434/@48.3641481,-113.7954137,10.71z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x0:0xcb995376b0228f94!2m2!1d-113.9940816!2d48.5279438!1m5!1m1!1s0x53664056c7acbef1:0xeb54cb9fc741d162!2m2!1d-113.2228519!2d48.4427459!3e0?hl=en) and that is about right depending on how much time to take stopping to observe the amazing views.
Per Amtrack's schedule the train takes 98 minutes. As usual, it is slower than driving but in this case I thought it would be a great option for a variety of reasons including:
- The novelty/beauty of a train ride in that setting,
- It is a short trip so the time difference isn't severe,
- The price for this short trip is only $13/person so that is negligible,
- My plan is to do a hike starting from the Two Medicine Ranger Station and Glacier Park has a cheap hiker shuttle from Glacier Park Lodge to the Two Medicine Ranger Station,
- The planned hike ends back near Apgar (after crossing the triple divide and then crossing the continental divide again) so I'd like my vehicle to be at Apgar where I plan to finish rather than at Glacier Park Lodge when I get done.
Here is the thing:
Amtrack's schedule has the train leaving WGL at 8:11am and arriving at GPK at 9:49am. My plan involves counting that day as one of my hiking days because I would plan to hike that day up to the Oldman Lake Campground on that day. It is only a 7 mile hike but it includes almost 1,800' of increased elevation so it wouldn't be an easy hike and I would want to be in camp WELL before dark because that is PRIME Grizzly country. I couldn't deal with hours of train delays before my hike started. Campground in Glacier offer reservations so I was planning to reserve everything in advance but in that case a train delay would be catastrophic because it would put me a day behind for ALL of my stops. Is that something I would need to plan for? Glacier Park Lodge is a beautiful spot, but I'd hate to burn a day there just to be sure I could start as planned.
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I have to admit that on the trip home (Monday, Jan 15) we ran into the storm that hit the midwest about half way across Pennsylvania. What started as about a 7 hour drive (8 counting the hour of dealing with traffic to get from midtown to the GWB ended up taking closer to 12 hours with the last half of the miles done at ~40MPH in the snow.
That said, here is the schedule information (assuming a trip tomorrow from Cleveland to New York):
The train leaves Cleveland at 5:50am and arrives at Penn Station in NYC at 6:23pm. That is a bit under 13 hours for a trip that didn't take me that long by car even with the snowstorm. Plus, you have to get up in the middle of the night to get to the train station in Cleveland at 0-dark-thirty.
Here is the return trip information (assuming a trip Thursday from NYP to CLE):
The train leaves Penn Station (NYP) at 3:40pm and arrives at Cleveland at 3:27am. That is quicker than the trip to NYC but still longer than typical car time. It also has the detriment of arriving in the middle of the night.
The trips are $84 each way so $168 per person round-trip. You could probably fly for around that if you booked far enough in advance and you'd do the trip a lot quicker or you could drive for less than that AND in less time.
I looked at it for a trip to Glacier Park and the price/time were ridiculous. It was so much slower and more expensive than driving that I could literally use the money saved to pay for hotels for two nights and STILL get there quicker and cheaper by driving.
(https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/500x/72628040/my-mistake.jpg)
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Marq:
Your experiences with Amtrack concern me because I have a long-term plan to do a hike in Glacier Park that involves taking the train from West Glacier (WGL) to East Glacier (GPK). The trip would be beautiful. The track basically runs along the Middle Fork of the Flathead River along with US Route 2 from the Station at West Glacier (Near Apgar) to a station across the street from Glacier Park Lodge. I drove that on my last trip to Glacier. Google says 63 minutes driving (https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Apgar+Village+Lodge/Glacier+Park+Lodge,+499+MT-49,+East+Glacier+Park,+MT+59434/@48.3641481,-113.7954137,10.71z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x0:0xcb995376b0228f94!2m2!1d-113.9940816!2d48.5279438!1m5!1m1!1s0x53664056c7acbef1:0xeb54cb9fc741d162!2m2!1d-113.2228519!2d48.4427459!3e0?hl=en) and that is about right depending on how much time to take stopping to observe the amazing views.
Per Amtrack's schedule the train takes 98 minutes. As usual, it is slower than driving but in this case I thought it would be a great option for a variety of reasons including:
- The novelty/beauty of a train ride in that setting,
- It is a short trip so the time difference isn't severe,
- The price for this short trip is only $13/person so that is negligible,
- My plan is to do a hike starting from the Two Medicine Ranger Station and Glacier Park has a cheap hiker shuttle from Glacier Park Lodge to the Two Medicine Ranger Station,
- The planned hike ends back near Apgar (after crossing the triple divide and then crossing the continental divide again) so I'd like my vehicle to be at Apgar where I plan to finish rather than at Glacier Park Lodge when I get done.
Here is the thing:
Amtrack's schedule has the train leaving WGL at 8:11am and arriving at GPK at 9:49am. My plan involves counting that day as one of my hiking days because I would plan to hike that day up to the Oldman Lake Campground on that day. It is only a 7 mile hike but it includes almost 1,800' of increased elevation so it wouldn't be an easy hike and I would want to be in camp WELL before dark because that is PRIME Grizzly country. I couldn't deal with hours of train delays before my hike started. Campground in Glacier offer reservations so I was planning to reserve everything in advance but in that case a train delay would be catastrophic because it would put me a day behind for ALL of my stops. Is that something I would need to plan for? Glacier Park Lodge is a beautiful spot, but I'd hate to burn a day there just to be sure I could start as planned.
There may be internet forums (imagine that) that get into the on time rate of these kinds of routes and those experiences with that run. My knee jerk would be to assume that that particularly stretch of track, couldn't nearly be as busy as the one between SEA/PDX. That stretch is crazy busy with trains. Of course we had 80 trains a day go past our dorms in Lincoln which were those 150+ cars. I'm sure you could find a good consensus. That's a good reason to pause though.
I know my Milwaukee to Thunder Bay Canada trek (years ago) wasn't so bad on timing, maybe an hour ish behind, it was lousy for other reasons, once we were north of the Twin Cities. Another trek between WY/CO wasn't that bad, again the draw there was a awfully cool terrain you get to see, which you often don't on a Interstate or State HWY. I wasn't in a hurry though.
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My experiences have been different than Marq's ... maybe it's a luck of the draw thing and I've just been lucky, but here is my rundown:
I've done the Portland-Seattle (and one time Portland-Vancouver BC) round trip many times. King St station in Seattle is located about 3 blocks from Safeco, so it's great to go up for a day game from pdx. Or from King St you can take the Sounder (commuter train) up to Pikes Market/downtown area, and from there you can take the monorail (for an antiquated 60s sci-fi kind of experience) to Seattle Center, where the EMP lives.
The trains are almost always on time, at least in my experience. In fact, they don't wait for you, so you'd better be aboard at the scheduled time because it's usually starting to roll then.
Last year I did the Baltimore to Boston (Back Bay sta) round trip, and it was 7 hours door to door (my apt was in downtown B'more last year so real close to Penn Station - yet another Penn Sta!). Back Bay is located only about 8 blocks from Fenway. Location close to MLB parks is a big plus for me. And 7 hours ... much better than driving the NE corridor (by a long shot) and in my book better than flying (I checked and it would have taken me at least 5 hours to drive to BWI, park, shuttle to the terminal, go through security, fly to Logan, taxi or rental car into downtown Boston through that crazy tunnel thing they've got there out of the airport). Saves a lot of aggravation. No traffic to wade through behind the wheel. And, unlike the sardine cans that airplanes have become, train seats are big and roomy and you can walk to the dining car or just stretch your legs, no problem. And you see cool parts of the countryside (and the "innards" of cities", a real graffiti tour) that you don't see from the interstate. Going to Seattle exposes you to parts of the Puget Sound you'd otherwise only see by boat.
Anyway, when I can, I take the train. It's so much better than driving or flying.
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My last 'rail' trip was a few years ago between Seattle and Portland (on the old track line, not the new one that just derailed) and it was at least 90 minutes longer than the scheduled travel times, which are already longer than a car or bus ride. This is always being blamed by Amtrak on the Freight Rails (BNSF) over Amtrak. (Summoning Froggy). This was tolerable for us, because we didn't really have to be in PDX on time and our kids loved the novelty of their first train ride, but it was not working for everybody else on the train.
Outside the Milwaukee to Chicago (Hiawatha line) and the NE Corridor, I can't think of anything nice about passenger train travel anywhere else I've tried, or explored.
That's actually a feature of the train system we have here, not a bug. Trains make the most sense when they're fully loaded. Trains are an absolutely GREAT solution for long-haul freight. Far more efficient per ton carried than big rig trucks.
Trains are an absolutely stupid way to move people over long distances, because you're basically moving air. They're slow. They're inflexible, in that every person on that train basically has to go the same route, whereas if you had the same number of people in buses they could go to 15 different destinations. And they have limited schedules, largely because the number of people you need on a train to make it economically viable means that you can barely ever run them because not enough people want to take them [for the cost/time reasons mentioned above].
So yes, American rails are typically owned by freight companies rather than Amtrak, and that means that often they'll prioritize freight. Which is what you'd expect. Amtrak is the preferred mode of travel for overly-romantic wealthy retirees. Nobody else has the time or inclination to do it. Why should overly-romantic wealthy retirees get priority over making sure that all the rest of us get our Amazon shipments on time?
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Your comments only apply to the US, and even then you're ignoring some highly used routes such as the NE corridor which is not occupied by wealthy retirees, but rather businesspeople, students, etc. It also ignores commuter rails and urban subway systems that are well subscribed by working folks in many cities in this country, particularly on the coasts.
Trains only function efficiently if you have sufficient coverage both in time and space. In many countries including Japan and a good chunk of Europe, this has been achieved, and so trains are one of the major modes of passenger transport. In the US, it hasn't, so it isn't.
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Your comments only apply to the US, and even then you're ignoring some highly used routes such as the NE corridor which is not occupied by wealthy retirees, but rather businesspeople, students, etc. It also ignores commuter rails and urban subway systems that are well subscribed by working folks in many cities in this country, particularly on the coasts.
Trains only function efficiently if you have sufficient coverage both in time and space. In many countries including Japan and a good chunk of Europe, this has been achieved, and so trains are one of the major modes of passenger transport. In the US, it hasn't, so it isn't.
Agreed in some respects...
Yes, there are actually areas of the US where it makes sense. That NE corridor is one of the VERY few. It's so because the population density up there is so much higher than most of the rest of the country.
And commuter rail / light rail is IMHO overly loved and under-delivers on promises regularly. People romanticize it because they want to be the sort of people who ride light rail but would NEVER be the sort of people who lower themselves to riding on--gasp--the BUS! But often light rail becomes a financial boondoggle, ridership never actually hits the projections, and instead of acknowledging that, cities try to make up the financial burden by cutting bus service. Again they help wealthy suburbanites at the expense of the people who absolutely NEED reliable public transit.
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/category/rail-and-mass-transit
Now, when the population density gets high enough, then commuter rail and urban subways make a lot of sense. But I don't think it's a matter of expanding coverage. I think that outside of the coasts, rail will NEVER be viable in the US. Why? Population density:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density
The US ranks 179th worldwide with 85 people per square mile. Much of Europe is 5x that or more. Japan is about 10x that. It completely changes the calculus.
I could go throughout Southern California from LA to San Diego by train / commuter rail. I could *maybe* justify a ride all the way up to San Francisco on the Pacific Surfliner if I didn't care about time and didn't want to drive. And maybe Phoenix/Tucson could work depending on what trains go there from here (I've never researched it). Anything longer than that is not viable. And this is in the US's most populous state. If I wanted to go to Portland or Seattle? Fly. Denver? Fly?
And frankly given how close NorCal and Phoenix are, and given how ridiculously easy it is to find cheap flights, I'd probably just fly anyway. Especially given that the train seems equal or more expensive than flying. If I wanted to save the money, it'd be a bus.
Now, if I lived in Denver, or if I lived in Salt Lake City, or if I lived in Lincoln, NE, or if I lived in Chicago, or Nashville, or Austin, almost EVERY place I might want to visit would be financially and schedule-wise not viable to go via rail.
The bulk of the USA is simply too spread out to justify passenger rail. Really the only viable place for it is the one area that everyone points to trying to justify passenger rail for the whole country. But the whole US doesn't have the same population density as the Northeast.
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I've only ridden trains for the pleasure
this is a good ride
http://www.durangotrain.com/ (http://www.durangotrain.com/)
I've also enjoyed a Murder Mystery Dinner Train
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And commuter rail / light rail is IMHO overly loved and under-delivers on promises regularly. People romanticize it because they want to be the sort of people who ride light rail but would NEVER be the sort of people who lower themselves to riding on--gasp--the BUS! But often light rail becomes a financial boondoggle, ridership never actually hits the projections, and instead of acknowledging that, cities try to make up the financial burden by cutting bus service. Again they help wealthy suburbanites at the expense of the people who absolutely NEED reliable public transit.
Nice analysis overall (in the parts of your post I didn't quote I mean). Agreed that many of the rural, sparsely populated areas will not likely benefit from passenger rail.
Only place I'd take some issue is with the generality of the paragraph above, which is based on an article of light rail in Seattle and Phoenix, primarily. Seattle was a late adopter of light rail (much to the delight of Portland, ever in competition with their larger neighbor to the north) and it has quite a limited network (if one can even call a single line a network). For example it doesn't extend to any of the neighborhoods north of downtown and only recently reached the UW campus as its final terminus on that end. It's actually just a north south line from SeaTac to now UW. So, no surprise that it's not well used as it's so limited in spatial reach.
Portland on the other hand, has continued to add lines, a new major one ever 5-10 years, including one that took me from my east Portland bungalo to my downtown university office at PSU, with only about 6 total blocks walking needed. I could also jump on the light rail and be at the PDX airport in about 20 min, with no parking needed, at a cost of $2.50. And, I never minded riding the bus either, as did a whole lot of other well dressed working folks that I witnessed. Bus 12 went right down Sandy also stopping two blocks from my campus office so also very convenient.
Anyway, certainly light rail/subways don't work everywhere as well as light rail does in Portland, or subways do in places like Wash DC or NYC, and so no doubt there are a good number of cases of Seattle and Phoenix out there, so your points remain valid for many. Anyway, here's a wiki list on light rail (doesn't show subways), which shows quite a range of ridership:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_light_rail_systems_by_ridership
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I've only ridden trains for the pleasure
this is a good ride
http://www.durangotrain.com/ (http://www.durangotrain.com/)
I've also enjoyed a Murder Mystery Dinner Train
That looks fun FF.
My favorite train ride ever was El Tren a los Nubes (The Train to the Clouds) which climbs up from Salta in NW Argentina to over 4000 meters up in the Andes on the Chilean border. They serve coca tea on board free of charge so you can cope with the altitude. Beautiful landscapes. Lots of twists and turns and even corkscrews and zig zags. (Not the rolling paper, but a way that the track goes back and forth up (and the train goes forward and backward, to go up steep grade in a couple of areas.) They say it's the fifth highest train in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tren_a_las_Nubes
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I'm guessing there have been a few corks screwed and a few of the other zig zags on that trip as well
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As far as intercity travel is concerned, the Northeast Corridor is good, and when I lived in Philadelphia I used it to get to NYC, Baltimore, DC, and Boston. When, I was in school, I took the Wolverine line to visit Chicago and now do the reverse to get to Ann Arbor. It's not as fast is should be because of freight traffic around Gary, but it's rather cheap, relaxing, and there's even some decent beer selection. Conversely, there's only a bus line to Indianapolis, which is just as expensive and more cramped.
Long-term, I hope the hyperloop becomes viable to replace short-distance intercity travel (by train and plane) and potentially even longer-distance travel, too. The alternative is that we'll be could in autonomous vehicles driving through the night while the passengers sleep, which would be okay but still much less efficient and presumably more expensive.
Of course, the challenge with regional transit now, is that for better or worse, autonomous vehicles could very well become dominant, even in cities where extensive transit systems exist like Chicago, much less those without them like Detroit and San Antonio. As I've said elsewhere, this transition will be starting soon....
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I seem to have inadvertently derailed this thread with my ill-advised Amtrak inquiry.
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I seem to have inadvertently derailed this thread with my ill-advised Amtrak inquiry.
Yes, we really got sidetracked ...
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medina, Very useful info; Hadn't occurred to me to look into getting to the Rutgers campus from Penn Station. I've used Penn Station about a dozen times for various trips in and out of Manhattan. Need to come up with a Rutgers trip now so I can see NYC again.
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Yes, we really got sidetracked ...
One heckuva switching failure too.
Anyway, railroad people here need to take a visit to Europe. The lines there are amazing, inexpensive, comfortable and convenient.
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I used to take Amtrak from Chicago to Syracuse to visit the GF at Cornell. I could take it overnight, and as a college student, it was more affordable than a flight from Milwaukee to Syracuse (though I did that, too). Once, in February, the train broke down in Buffalo because it overheated...reportedly because it was working so hard to fight the brutally cold weather.
I ride the train, whether electric heavy rail (think DC Metro), or traditional diesel electric, every day for my commute, and I prefer the traditional one. It will go electric in the next few years (which is a great thing), and should get extended to downtown SF, which is even better.
We're also thinking about taking an overnight train from here to Salt Lake and back for a family visit to Yellowstone, but that's probably at least a year out. This summer we hope to spend some time in Europe and expect a lot of train travel between major destinations.
Trains are a great means of transportation, but aren't well suited to sparsely populated areas, of which there are many in the U.S. For travel of under four hours, high speed rail would be a great upgrade over flying for a variety of reasons, but the U.S. public is skeptical for some reasonable (cost) and some bad (years of successful auto lobbying) reasons. We are decades behind the rest of "the west" on this, likely because in the 1950s we had so much land, so much industrial production, and so much oil. Our current economy is much better suited to trains, but we haven't recovered from our fixation on the car, and just because many areas of our country are suited for trains, doesn't mean all are.
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Trains are a great means of transportation, but aren't well suited to sparsely populated areas, of which there are many in the U.S. For travel of under four hours, high speed rail would be a great upgrade over flying for a variety of reasons, but the U.S. public is skeptical for some reasonable (cost) and some bad (years of successful auto lobbying) reasons. We are decades behind the rest of "the west" on this, likely because in the 1950s we had so much land, so much industrial production, and so much oil. Our current economy is much better suited to trains, but we haven't recovered from our fixation on the car, and just because many areas of our country are suited for trains, doesn't mean all are.
Well, the high speed rail I'm most familiar with is the idea of SoCal (LA, possibly somewhere south) to NorCal (San Jose / San Francisco). The problem is that I don't see how it's an upgrade over flying or driving. Granted, it does violate your 4-hour distance, as it's closer to 5-6. But I highlight it as it's an EXTREMELY popular route, including to the point that I've flown from Orange County to San Jose in the morning for business travel, and flown back the same night, and seen multiple people on the evening flight that I saw on the morning flight.
Flying is easy. There are 5 airports in the LA/OC metro area (LAX, Orange County, Long Beach, Burbank, and Ontario) and one in San Diego. There are 3 airports in the SF Bay Area (San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland). So for the bulk of the population of either metro, you're not more than 30 minutes drive from one of those airports. From any one of these, it's a 1 hr flight between them. Even including driving to the airport, navigating security, boarding, flight time, deboarding, and getting a rental car, you're probably within 4 hrs. Even if you're going to SF and want to take BART from SFO to downtown, it's still pretty darn quick.
Contrast that to high speed rail. Although they call it "high speed", it's going to be difficult to make the trip from downtown LA to SF in less than 6 hours. They could easily do it if they don't stop along the route, but politically they can't build it if it doesn't have a few stops along the way. And logically, it's hard to justify ridership if it doesn't stop in San Jose and bypasses it to go straight to SF. And that's assuming they can build it to go anywhere close to the downtown of either place, which will be a nightmare. That also doesn't include the transit time that I included above to get to the station [airport], to get through a terminal, for the boarding/deboarding process, etc. I'll bet that including transit time *IF* you live near the station, you're looking at 8 hrs.
For me, to get to downtown LA is somewhere between a 1 and 2 hour process. So unless they extend the rail line much farther south, I have to either drive to LA (ugh!) or take a train into LA and hope that they find a way to terminate the high speed rail at Union Station.
Everyone says it's got great advantages over flying, but I fail to see what those advantages are. I can see it for very short trips (i.e. Los Angeles to San Diego), particularly if you know you won't need a car when you get where you're going. But otherwise it's more hassle, more cost, and more time than anything else.
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The technology is easily there to get from LA to SF in under three hours, including multiple stops. It can drop people off at key locations, unlike the plane, when taking boarding and transportation to and from into account, it is faster, it is safer by just about every metric, including potential for terrorism, it is more comfortable, and it uses fewer resources. It is also more scalable. One of the issues with the LA to SF air route is that none of the Bay Area airports have capacity to expand any further; nor do the freeways into the Bay Area. However, California has--and will continue to--grow, thus expanding past the already over-capacity airports and freeways.
This isn't to say high speed rail will replace all air travel; for some people--apparently including you--flying will still be a better option. But for people in the highest density areas of the state, high speed rail is a much better option--if only it gets built.
Its opponents are doing everything they can to drive up the cost because they know that is the most likely way to kill it. That includes recruiting as many people as possible to fight every proposal along the way. The public notice and comment and environmental requirements in the U.S. and California make a lot of sense in many ways, but also put up a lot of roadblocks that make it much easier to slow down or kill projects than in many other places. Democracy is not very efficient. The result of that is that political interest groups (including elected officials) look for every opportunity to force compromises that benefit them. Europe and Japan didn't have this big a problem with trains because cars didn't make as much financial sense there as they did here (because of higher density, lack of land, oil, and industrial production at the time the city-to-city transportation networks improved to more modern trains).
And recognizing the benefit of public infrastructure projects has always been difficult. The Hoover Dam finally made it through because it promised to generate electricity (it does, but that's hardly it's main purpose). The people of Boston hated the Big Dig (and hate it--meaning the process--still) because of the cost and intrusion, but they love the Boston it created. They have no trouble with the cognitive dissonance. People up here in the SF area complain that the BART extension to the airport cost too much money and doesn't impact them, but they would blanch at all those riders if they were put back on the freeways. Same for the CalTrain system. They worry that it doesn't pay for itself, but the gas taxes and car registration fees (even with the newly raised taxes) don't come close to paying for the roads we drive on (I believe the number is around 30%).
Public infrastructure is hard and expensive, and won't provide everyone a direct benefit, but it often provides secondary and tertiary benefits that people don't take into account.
And it's very possible that all the compromises that go into making the California high speed rail a reality will make what could have been a great boon to the state's economy instead an albatross.
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Trains in Japan and Korea are useful and popular. I've traveled by rail in both countries.
Both are very densely populated and don't have much room to expand their highway systems.
I would guess that additional reasons that Europe, Japan, and Korea have better passenger rail than we do is that they have governments that historically have been less-responsive to the public will than we do, and that they value personal freedom, at least the "free to go where I want when I want" variety of personal freedom, less than we do.
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Thanks for the writeup.
The problem with the hyperloop isn't the speed at which everything is going. It's the sudden stop when something goes wrong.
During the Bakken oil boom, BNSF spent a lot of Warren Buffet's money in Minnesota and North Dakota fixing some of the mistakes that BN's management made during their 80's extract-everything-possible-for-shareholders phase. Some of it was spent on re-installing double track on 10 miles of it just west of the Twin Cities that was pulled up in the early 80s. There was also a bad winter during that boom (2013?) that was hard on the heels of a bumper harvest. It swamped both BNSF and the CP (the two dominant rail carriers in the Dakotas), and they had an awful time recovering from it. There is more pipeline capacity in the area now, so there are a lot fewer oil trains going east on the River and St. Croix Subs.
The Empire Builder remains a critical service in the transportation-starved country of northern Montana. All the other land-based transport going east-west through Montana is focused on the I-90/94 corridor in southern Montana.
Also, I'd like to think a second Builder train set from the Twin Cities to Chicago, or an overnight sleeper service, would be a hit, but that's just me.
I'm going to be working in MnDOT's Rail office from mid-February to the end of May, which should be interesting.
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That said, here is the schedule information (assuming a trip tomorrow from Cleveland to New York):
The train leaves Cleveland at 5:50am and arrives at Penn Station in NYC at 6:23pm. That is a bit under 13 hours for a trip that didn't take me that long by car even with the snowstorm. Plus, you have to get up in the middle of the night to get to the train station in Cleveland at 0-dark-thirty.
I went on Mapquest to calculate the difference in travel time, between train and auto, Cleveland to NYC, and it's about 5-hours one-way. That is significant.
About 6-years ago we had a family vacation that included NYC. My daughter was in a gymnastics meet in West Virginia. We wanted the NYC experience. We traveled north to Harrisburg, and took a 200 mile commuter train to Penn Station. I arranged a hotel kitty-corner across the street. We wheeled the suitcases across the way upon arrival. It was such a great way to travel. We could sleep on the way in, and were well-rested and ready to go. I have fought the NYC traffic when I was a tour bus driver as a young guy. It is distressing and wears you out. That extra 10-hours RT might be a deal breaker on a train from Cleveland. But on a vacation Harrisburg to NYC, it was a deal maker. I didn't have to take a 2-hour nap in the hotel before walking to Time Square.
Medina, thanks for the report. It was a great article. Like you I was enamored with Gator's reports, as well.
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I would guess that additional reasons that Europe, Japan, and Korea have better passenger rail than we do is that they have governments that historically have been less-responsive to the public will than we do, and that they value personal freedom, at least the "free to go where I want when I want" variety of personal freedom, less than we do.
Well I do think that they tend to prioritize passenger rail over freight as well. But is that a good idea?
As I said above, using rail for freight makes great sense. It's much more efficient per ton to do long-haul transport by rail rather than by car. Apparently Europe thinks the opposite:
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2008/02/european-vs-ame.html
Europe has decided to run its rail system primarily for passengers, while America's system is run mainly for freight. Europe's rail system has about 6 percent of the passenger travel market, while autos have about 78 percent. Meanwhile, 75 percent of European freight goes by highway. Here in the U.S., highway's share of freight travel is only 29 percent, while the auto's share of passenger travel is about 82 percent. So trains get 4 percent of potential auto users in Europe out of their cars, but leave almost three times as much freight on the highway.
How does it make more sense to load a bunch of people into nearly-empty cars on a fixed rail line when we can load big shipping containers full of goods that would otherwise clog up our highways even more?
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American railroads found that they couldn't operate profitable passenger service once the government stopped using them to haul the mail.
And World War II really hurt American passenger rail. Many hundreds of thousands of GIs traveled across country on "troop cars" that had been converted from freight cars. There was nothing comfortable about them. Many of them vowed they'd never ride a train again, and they kept those vows.
It's my impression that American railroads get less in the way of government subsidies, government-built infrastructure, and tax write-offs of all transportation modes.
But, after all that, American railroads are hauling more ton-miles of freight than they ever have before. And they haul it much more efficiently than trucks do.
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All this rail talk and no SDF? We need to send him a signal.
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I enjoyed the Rutgers campus as well, even though it was for football, not B-Ball. The area in general really surprised me. Yes, pay attention to the Pen Station Train Stop.......as stated, I to will not share how I learned the difference! In fact, I believe that was the trip we ran into each on the USS New Jersey. LOL
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I enjoyed the Rutgers campus as well, even though it was for football, not B-Ball. The area in general really surprised me. Yes, pay attention to the Pen Station Train Stop.......as stated, I to will not share how I learned the difference! In fact, I believe that was the trip we ran into each on the USS New Jersey. LOL
Funny that you ran into the same Penn Station issue. The USS New Jersey was a highlight of our trip to Rutgers for the Football game. It is an awesome sight to behold.
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I went on Mapquest to calculate the difference in travel time, between train and auto, Cleveland to NYC, and it's about 5-hours one-way. That is significant.
About 6-years ago we had a family vacation that included NYC. My daughter was in a gymnastics meet in West Virginia. We wanted the NYC experience. We traveled north to Harrisburg, and took a 200 mile commuter train to Penn Station. I arranged a hotel kitty-corner across the street. We wheeled the suitcases across the way upon arrival. It was such a great way to travel. We could sleep on the way in, and were well-rested and ready to go. I have fought the NYC traffic when I was a tour bus driver as a young guy. It is distressing and wears you out. That extra 10-hours RT might be a deal breaker on a train from Cleveland. But on a vacation Harrisburg to NYC, it was a deal maker. I didn't have to take a 2-hour nap in the hotel before walking to Time Square.
Medina, thanks for the report. It was a great article. Like you I was enamored with Gator's reports, as well.
Five extra hours one way from Cleveland to NYC? Man, how slow are these dagone trains going?
I mean I am sure that they have to make about a half a dozen stops or so along the way, but it's not as though they have to worry about stop and go traffic, car accidents, rush hour traffic, traffic cops, traffic lights, traffic circles, speed bumps, food stops, gas stops, restroom stops, road construction or getting stuck at a long railroad crossing.