Amtrak Residency
blog.amtrak.com
blog.amtrak.com
There are lots of things that challenge rail in the US, perhaps the most obvious is private ownership of the rails themselves, as opposed to freeways which are state owned and maintained. That shifts a lot of costs on to fewer payers. It also means the rail owner's trains get priority (in this case freight) so scheduling is quite difficult to maintain. There is also a tremendous amount of bureaucracy and complexity built into the system which I've found resists even modestly determined prodding. As part of an exercise in home schooling we tried to find out what it actually cost to put in the San Jose light rail in order to compare that to what we had learned about the Northern Pacific Railroad at a wonderful museum in Sacramento. All of our efforts to get what I had assumed was just boring public data were met with suspicion and resistance. That was pretty weird.
Take a common train ride in Europe: Paris to Berlin. You've actually traveled less distance than from New York to Chicago, and it took 8 hours to do so.
In fact from Paris all the way to Moscow is much shorter than from LA to NYC.
Without some amazing new tech in rail, I doubt it'll ever be a popular alternative in the US to flying (other than intra-regional trips).
As one example where it's already done, the DC-NYC Amtrak route is quite popular, despite being just as expensive, if not more so, as the plane ride. It takes a similar amount of time, factoring in travel to and from airports, waiting, etc. and is much nicer. There are still a ton of airline flights between these two cities as well, of course, and those could probably be supplanted to a large degree with additional improvements.
That's with current American trains, which are painfully slow. Imagine modern high-speed rail between, for example, DC and Miami. It's a bit over 1,000 miles which would take about five hours. That would be an excellent substitute for the plane trip, which is about two hours in the air, but tons of time and hassle at the airports. I have family in South Florida and if such a train existed at something like a reasonable price, I'd definitely go for it. As it is, Amtrak on that route takes nearly 24 hours and costs way more than an airline ticket. I don't see why they get any passengers at all, given that.
Seems like 1,000 miles is about the limit for high-speed trains. How many pairs of large American cities are less than 1,000 miles apart and have lots of travel between them? I would bet there are quite a number. Rail doesn't have to solve everything to solve a bunch of things.
Airplanes add about three hours onto the trip just to account for getting to and from the airports (which are almost always far away from the city), going through security, arriving early enough to account for unexpected problems, etc. With trains it's much less, often well under an hour.
However, airplanes go much faster. That DC-Miami trip would be about five hours by high-speed train and is about two hours by plane. It would be roughly a wash when you account for the extra overhead of airplane travel, making the train more attractive due to being more comfortable and potentially cheaper. But go much farther, and the plane starts to get a lot faster. For a coast-to-coast flight, a high-speed train is still going to take nearly a full day, while an airplane can do it in about eight hours after accounting for the extra overhead.
So, as far as I can see, 1,000 miles is roughly the breakeven point on planes versus high speed rail.
1. Speed (physical limitation). Due to reduced overhead (time getting to and at airport), trains are faster or equivalent to air travel for short (<500 mi) routes, and are not much slower for medium (<1000 mi) routes. Whereas for cross country (~3000 mi) routes, even a high speed train would take a couple of days for a trip that could be made in 10 hours by plane (incl. overhead).
2. Infrastructure costs. Air travel infrastructure is proportional to the number of passengers and constant with respect to the travel distance (since each passenger occupies 1/200th of a gate at two airports for about an hour, regardless of the travel distance. Rail travel infrastructure is proportional to the distance traveled and relatively constant with respect to the number of passengers. These combine to mean that shorter trips with more passengers are more competitive by rail, and longer trips with fewer passengers are more competitive by plane.
This means that if you wish to go from ATL, Raleigh/Durham, etc to Chicago, you have to make "connections" (good luck making that on amtrack) in either Charlottesville VA or DC. After that it is still 24 hrs at best.
There's been some talk of a Louisville-Lexington-Nashville line, but nothing particularly likely to happen.
We need more rail stations all over the country!
The DC, Baltimore, Philly, NYC, Boston route covers millions of people. It is absolutely criminal that we cannot get trains on this route which have average speeds greater than ~90mph (amtrack acela express). DC to Boston is only ~450 miles. Even if we get to only 150-200mph (which is already occurring in China over long distances) we are looking at only 2-3 hours from DC to Boston.
[1]https://maps.google.co.jp/maps?saddr=Tokyo+Station,+Tokio&da...
[2]https://www.google.com/maps/dir/New+York,+NY,+USA/Washington...
[3]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=230mi+in+km
[4]https://maps.google.co.jp/maps?saddr=aomori&daddr=okayama&hl...
[1]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/JR_Centra...
Even the bus system is pretty solid between these cities - but an upgraded train system would be much preferred through sitting in traffic & stressing behind the wheel.
The hub system in different locations (NE, Midwest, West Coast) with a few connection points - would be an incredible option to have.
The US has arguably the best freight rail system in the world, and it seems like a lot of the problems with US passenger rail stem from that.
I guess your children learned something. I am just not sure whether you want them to become so cynical so soon.
Also, this guy documented his trip from Vienna to Pyongyang, North Korea: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/
One tip: if you're thinking of making the journey, bring a small hose with you so you can hook it onto the sink and have a little shower. Also, there are companies that will arrange home stays if you want to get off in Yekaterinburg or a few other towns and kick around for a bit.
Several hours before midnight, the coach I was in started morphing. Normally people didn't really talk to each other. That night, seatmates started talking, impromptu cardgames were started, I was certainly not the only one with hidden alcohol, and the bar was providing plenty for those without. By midnight the car I was in, and the adjacent car with the bar, were in full party mode. It was simultaneously one of the most surreal and awesome trips I have ever taken.
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As for the Amtrak writer program - very cool. As a young serviceman, I would frequently catch a Friday night Amtrack away from the military town I was stationed in, picking a random location that I could spend Saturday in, and then ride back Sunday afternoon. I didn't write about or photograph my travels (wish I had), but I can't image a writer worth their salt not being inspired by the scenery, events, or people met on such random jaunts.
It was an interesting experience but not one that I would repeat. It is by no means a smooth ride, and even with the bedroom I found it quite difficult to get any sleep. Between the horn constantly going off, the bumpiness of the tracks, and the hourly stops/starts, I basically ended up staying awake for 2 days straight.
While I was initially able to get some work done during the trip, after the first night I was way too sleep deprived to be able to continue programming.
But then again, I am a light sleeper, and I have trouble falling asleep on planes too.
To give an idea just how big freight traffic is in the U.S., freight by rail is something like 1.7 trillion ton-mile (39.9% of freight by ton-mile). The total across all modes in the EU is 1.4 trillion ton-mile, of which rail makes up 17%, so only about an eighth of the U.S. in freight. This has led to fairly different rail systems.
Edit: looks like this is coming along, http://theenergycollective.com/parthvaishnav/287406/icao-dea...
I'm genuinely curious because I've always been told that flying is worse, and it would be nice to feel less guilty about flying.
Coming to think of it maybe planes are worse because of the fact that, even if driving is worse for the same distance, people are willing to go much further with planes because they are so much faster, and therefore end up polluting more overall.
Air planes require much less personnel and have no tracks. Trains are still in 60ies with fat unions and zero innovations. Also how is 50 ton airplane less efficient than 5000 ton train?
And if train takes 5 days instead of 5 hours, you should also count in the foot print of person who is traveling. In one sleeping coupe you could fit 6 aircraft passengers...
Sure airplanes do make traveling easier, but that does not make them less efficient.
These aren't controversial numbers, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati... . And really, a plane is more like a bus than a car, where planes lose by a lot more still.
But it's silly to compare to cars as if matching cars would be ok - car co2 emissions are also very bad.
Sleeping in a bedroom has never been a problem for me on a train. The swaying sort of lulls me.
Sleeping in a chair in coach is very difficult for me, though I eventually catch naps that way.
I wrote a lot of the early bits of Hecl ( www.hecl.org ) on trains between Padova and Rome.
Yes. But what would make traveling by train more attractive for regular people is making trains smell less like a cesspit of urine and vomit.
But sending a bunch of hipster writers on a PR tour is probably a bit cheaper.
The primary problem with Amtrak is that they rarely compete with air travel in terms of price/speed. I prefer them to air travel anyway though because I rarely care about speed and the (effective) absence of the TSA more than makes up for it. (Also last-minute (literally, purchased minutes before departure) Amtrak tickets are more affordable than last minute plane tickets.)
I think that romanticising train travel is a good approach to attacking their speed disadvantage (though I think that working on reducing fares and increasing coverage are also essential).
The NRE is more like what flying business class used to be 15 years ago. Plenty of space, clean, relaxing lighting, a snack bar, etc. Most airplanes these days are filthy (they scrimp on cleaning between flights), don't run air conditioning enough on hot days, not to mention cramped.
Not only I got to see a lot of places, but I truly accomplished more quality work than I normally do in a similar time-frame. Nearly zero distractions other than the occasional beautiful sight and the rest breaks I took, I had the chance to visit the surroundings of the major stations the train stopped at.
Perhaps it's my ability to sleep in the weirdest places, but I found the sightseer lounge car couches very comfortable. I went to bed 1hr or so after dusk, and I woke up with the morning lights. That's about 8h of sleep or so every night.
PS: Make sure to download a metric shitton of music before you do this. The sightseer car (the only place where one can truly work comfortably in the train) is usually a noisy place.
I definitely downloaded a ton of movies and music and brought a few books.
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/02/19/writing-the-la...
But yes, Amtrak does go very slow, at least the one time I used it it did :)
US: http://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/71789-050-459169a...
EU: http://education.randmcnally.com/images/edpub/Europe_Populat... (note the very different colour schemes).
Bad tracks and diesel locomotives are more likely to be the culprit here.
As an example, the Amtrak train that runs between Washington DC and Boston (serving NYC along the way, and continuing on to Norfolk, VA) stops not only at DC's main train station, but also at New Carrollton, MD and Alexandria, VA, which are not only quite close to DC, but actually on the DC Metro system, making these stops almost completely redundant.
I count no less than thirty two stops between Boston and DC. The trip is about 9.5 hours long, so that's an average of one stop every 18 minutes.
The NYC->Chicago trip isn't quite as bad, but still has 19 stops in between. Along the way, it stops in such bustling metropolises as Elkhart, IN (population 51,152) and Sandusky, OH (population 25,493).
The typical Northeast Regional between D.C. and NYC is: New York City, Newark, Metropark, Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, BWI, New Carrolton, D.C. That's 8 intermediate stops over 3.5 hours, or one per 26 minutes. The Acela Express doesn't stop at Metropark, Trenton, BWI, or New Carrolton.
Why does even the Acela pass through Wilmington? The city only has 70,000 people, but is also a hub of corporate law firms and credit card companies. Wilmington boards about 800k passengers per yer, versus Baltimore's 1m, despite the latter being about 10x as big.
I was 'fortunate' enough to sit next to a girl that had ideas on me from Grand Junction Colorado all the way to Chicago. I would not have had that random encounter had I travelled deluxe cabin class. Writing about the hundreds of miles of corn fields going by has not a lot going for it whereas an expected girl meets boy experience has broader appeal. Also on the same coach were a couple I had met months before in Yosemite. Having them in proximity cramped my style as far as my new-found lady friend was concerned, this was a constraint that adds to storytelling. A cabin based romantic experience would not be so good and neither would a few moments of passion with an existing partner in a cabin really have the 'Mills & Boon' factor.
Food was a problem on said journey for me, in part due to the train being six hours late at Grand Junction, by which point I had eaten almost all of the luxury ready eats I had bought for the journey. Even the six hour wait was noteworthy - you cannot leave the station as the train could arrive at any moment. So, for me, it was the random happenings and the constraints of money, timetable and what you can do in public that made the journey an adventure.
The thing is that you cannot have an authentic travel experience and write about it at the same time. You have to live life rather than be there to document it.
As for being able to experience it and write about it, you just did. My wife does travel writing and you don't have to go around with your face in your notepad ignoring the experience. Just take notes now and then about specifics you might forget(usually costs and package names) and have your pictures.
For me though I need more. I need to not know if I will come out alive, I need genuine hospitality that need not be paid for, I need to meet people along the way that are not directly connected to the tourism industry. I need to be treated as a guest and a human being, not just a nice-enough tourist. I also don't need to be poking cameras in people's faces or writing about them. In summary, I need adventure, as in the stuff you cannot have an itinerary for.
In some ways your back-packers comparing notes on who stayed in the scummiest places are a bit like my relatives, just at a different point in life and on a different trail. At times on my travels I have crossed paths with them and their backpacker dives, however, I am typically able to avoid all that. I can call someone up that I met on the road and stay with them, unannounced. They might live in some unusual house, have some interesting job and be more than willing to give me an insider view of town rather than what I would discover as a tourist. That is what 'authentic travel' is about.
I should say that I have a secret weapon - a bicycle. With a bicycle you don't stay in the small out of the way places just to be more 'cool'. It is a necessity, you cannot just blast 500 miles along the big highway, at best you can do 50 miles in one burst before needing to stop for at least water, and on little roads 'off the tourist trail'. On the bicycle there is no windscreen between you and the world, you are actually in it and part of it.
Regarding writing, a retrospective account is always wrong, even if filled with tedious 'specifics'. There is no way of conveying genuine anticipation once the moment has gone, in your writing this knowing-the-answer-already aspect is not something you can disguise honestly, merely feign as the feeling has passed.
I remember a conversation at a little dive hostel in Durban, where the table was recounting their Bad Flight stories, one upping each other as one does at dive hostels around the world. After a particularly grim story about The Gambia, this heretofore quiet older guy mumbles "yeah, I'm never going to fly Air Ethiopia again."
Conversation proceeded, but after a few more stories, I asked the guy why, exactly he wasn't planning to fly that airline again.
Turned out he'd personally been on not one but two Air Ethiopia plane crashes. Crashed two thirds of their fleet single handedly evidently.
The second time, they'd landed in the jungle in the Congo, were detained by a local warlord, attempted escape, and were gunned down by the local militia. Back in government hands, the survivors were put on a plane, which sat on the runway for an hour surrounded by jeeps and shouting men before they were unloaded and marched off to a shed, expecting to be killed. Several tense hours later, the "general" came back and said they could go now, and apologized for the delay, as they needed the plane "to bomb the rebels."
Then he showed us the bullet wound in his back.
Since then, I tend to temper my speech when discussing how authentic my personal travel experiences are in relation to others.
But I did steal his story.
You like the things you do. That is great. It doesn't make your travels more authentic than your older relatives though it is just a different experience. And you can get all of those things you desire and still spend your nights in a Hilton.
With regards to the writing I have to honestly disagree. Maybe you can't do it but doesn't mean no one can. You are ignoring the possibility that you just have a worse memory or writing skills than a lot of people out there. You assume your travels are more real and apparently you also assume your writing skills and memory are the peak as well.
-Ed Abbey, Desert Solitare
As someone who has taken train/plane/bus/car between NYC and DC the last couple of years, I can say without a doubt that Amtrak is the most civilized way to get between those two places. If I didn't have family in Oregon I'd never get on a plane again.
Whereas sometimes the mindset "the journey not the destination". That's when you can appreciate a train, ocean liner, bicycle, or feet.
Having said that, Acela is usually the best of both worlds.
That said, you go much further than New York and the train makes less sense either in terms of time or money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coast_Starlight
I find train travel to be super relaxing - check it out sometime if you get a chance.
My long distance travel has been exclusively by Amtrak for the past ten years. I live in Chicago, which is pretty central to the system - I might not have been so strict if I lived somewhere else.
Train gets a lot less interesting as an option as the distance increases. I have taken Amtrak from Boston to Washington and it's definitely doable but it's not really especially competitive with flying .
That being said, there is definitely a drop-off in quality of service on Amtrak between the Northeast Corridor (DC to Boston) and the routes covering the rest of the country. Because the Northeast Corridor is by far the most heavily traveled and profitable part of Amtrak's network (see http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2013/amtrakro...), it gets a level of service that other long-haul routes unfortunately do not.
This claim was made in a WP article[1], but as this government report[2] points out, the accounting procedures used were flawed. To the point a Brookings Institute report[3] which reported in Slate[4] got the numbers wrong. Basically, it is only profitable if you do not count capital costs.
1) http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/commuting/amtrak-faces-c...
2) http://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/dot/files/Amtrak's%20New%20Cost...
3) http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2013...
4) http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/03/01/amtrak_profit...
> In recent years the train acquired the nickname "Coast Starlate" because of its abysmal on-time record. From October 2005 through August 2006 it arrived on time only 2% of the time, often running 5 to 11 hours behind schedule.
I've taken that line... it is beautiful (and provides an amazing view of Vandenberg AFB) but you've got to be in no hurry. The staff were amazed when we were "only" 6 hours behind schedule.
Unfortunately for Amtrak the North-East corridor trains that you've experienced are the exception, not the rule.
Since the route has dozens of stops, and a multi-hour delay could happen between any of them, where do you put the slack in the schedule?
It also didn't help that it took until 2013 to get GPS tracking on their fleet: http://blog.amtrak.com/2013/09/google-helps-track-a-train/ I would have linked to the status page itself but it is, fittingly, down for maintenance today. Just knowing whether your train was running behind before going to the station wasn't available until recently.
What it comes down to is that 34 hour trips are not something we are ready to put up with anymore, unless we somehow make the trip itself part of the goal, whether it's an "Amtrak Residency" or a long range road trip with the sights and the hotels.
Having 3-5 shorts lines service the 34h/1400mi overall length makes more sense really. Maybe 5 7h lines during the day, and 3 11h overnighters. 7 to 8 hours is about as long as I'm willing to spend in a daytime train, and my previous experiences with 10 to 12 hour sleeper wagon trips have been pretty great, too. Any trips longer than that you can either spend a night in Sacramento or you have to take a plane or you just don't go and vote that the rail network gets improved beyond a pathetic 40 mph average.
I have no doubt that his train arrived 6 hours late, and that one of the crew couldn't pronounce Sauvignon Blanc. Not sure that it counts as a major tragedy.
There should have been a warning on that link for people who remember Peter Bagge from 90s comics: "Yet another person that you were entertained by when you were young turns out to be a total prick, don't click if you don't want a piece of your childhood spoiled."
I used to take a train from San Diego to Santa Barbara regularly during college. I probably road it 10 to 15 times. The train was often late, and twice EXTREMELY late. Once, I waited at the station over 8 hours. The train had broken down, and another train was sent to push it to the station. That train broke down too.
On one trip, my train ran out of fuel. I didn't think this was even possible. We sat in dim emergency-level lighting in the blackness of night for 4 hours waiting for another train to come push us to the station.
Otherwise, it's a great experience. Low price, smooth ride, electrical outlets, and cell phone signal. It takes longer than other modes of transportation (even when on time), but that's fine by me.
I was on that train; it was the day before Thanksgiving. It was the worst public transportation incident I had ever experienced. On top of the engine breaking down the electricity also went out, which prevented the air conditioners from running. With the large amount of people the trains were carrying, the heat grew to be too much and someone ended up fainting. So we had to wait about an hour for the ambulance to come by and revive the person.
Once we reached the LA station, because we had two large trains coupled to each other, people couldn't get off because the platform wasn't large enough. So they had to back the train out, decouple some cars, and go back into the platform. This went on several times before everyone could get off.
I also didn't get the "Potemkin" reference. I thought it meant something made just for show.
I would NOT advise applying, as it means essentially signing away the rights to the work you send them as a sample just by APPLYING:
"6. Grant of Rights: In submitting an Application, Applicant hereby grants Sponsor the absolute, worldwide, and irrevocable right to use, modify, publish, publicly display, distribute, and copy Applicant’s Application, in whole or in part, for any purpose, including, but not limited to, advertising and marketing, and to sublicense such rights to any third parties."
"Applicant grants Sponsor the absolute, worldwide, and irrevocable right to use, modify, publish, publicly display, distribute, and copy the name, image, and/or likeness of Applicant and the names of any such persons identified in the Application for any purpose, including, but not limited to, advertising and marketing. For the avoidance of doubt, one’s Application will NOT be kept confidential"
"Upon Sponsor's request and without compensation, Applicant agrees to sign any additional documentation that Sponsor may require so as to effect, perfect or record the preceding grant of rights"
>The ideal candidate will possess strong writing skills as well as extensive social media connections.
>http://blog.amtrak.com/officialterms/
It would be interesting to see if an author gets the exposure necessary for publishing solely through this program.
Being able to give up your day job has always been a dicey decision for writers, and that situation has not improved.
Doesn't every writer have some sample article for this sort of thing? Nobody uses their unpublished masterpiece as the application material.
It's the middle of the day on Sunday. WTF.
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http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...
I would definitely do this.
Why?
[1]http://dduane.tumblr.com/post/79161065289/the-amtrak-residen...
The idea of the artist in residence is to get away from one's daily routines and environment into a new and enriching environment for the artist. Its not a "get from point A to point B" that they're giving away its a "experience riding around the US on the railway and talk with the people who are on the train or see the scenery so that you can become a better writer." The start and end of the trip are purely coincidental.
As to if its less expensive than tickets: section 10 of the official terms shows what will be given: a travel voucher for 1 person on a sleeper train for between 2 to 5 days that would be worth about $900. The key here is given - free is much less than the cost of tickets.