A better way to travel? Not quite
Having survived the ride from Montana to California in my daughter Betty’s SUV, I needed to find transport back to Big Sky Country. Betty was to leave early Monday morning to get her daughter Sutton back to school by Wednesday.
I chose to stay an extra few days so I could meet with my friend who now lives north of Bellingham, Wash. but was in the Southland for a jazz festival.
Thanksgiving week was wonderful with almost all the family at the ranch, which won’t happen again for another year at least. My sister, nephew and his wife will be in Martinique for Christmas with her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, the French side of the family. They actually drove up on Friday in the new Prius, packed to the hilt with my sister’s belongings because Malibu was once again ablaze. You all know what that’s like. Wondering if you’ll have anything to come home to.
Anyway, it all worked out except for getting me on some kind of northbound public conveyance. My first choice was the train. I checked the Amtrak Web site and came away totally confused. So I went to AAA, knowing they would charge me $25 to write the ticket, but that it would be worth it if we could make it work. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I was encouraged by a recent article in Parade magazine touting train travel as the answer to high gas prices and airport delays.
For the better part of an hour, I sat across the desk from Joan, a travel specialist of infinite patience and far better computer research skills than I. The first leg of my Amtrak journey would be an overnight ride on the Coast Starlight from Oxnard to Seattle, boarding at Oxnard at 11:55 a.m. Wednesday, arriving Seattle at 8:45 p.m. Thursday. I did this in reverse a few years ago coming back from Vancouver. That’s the easy part. Nothing, it seems, leaves Seattle after 8:45 p.m., so I would have to stay in a hotel near the train station, then piddle around town all day before boarding Amtrak’s Empire Builder at 4:45 p.m. Friday. Well, I could spend that much time in Powell’s Book Store, one of my all time favorites and not far from the depot. Sleep on the train again arriving in Whitefish Montana at 7:26 a.m. Saturday. I would at that point be four days into the voyage, de-training in subzero weather where I would wait three and a half hours for the Rim Rock Trailways bus to Bozeman with a transfer in Missoula (30 minutes) and a stop in Butte (60 minutes for the engineer and crew to eat a decent meal, no doubt). I would arrive, with any luck at all, by 8:40, hail a cab and maybe get to my destination at about nine or 10. Four days and three nights on road and rail, a good part of it at night with no chance for leisurely observation of the landscape. What was I thinking?
There used to be a train from Whitefish or West Glacier, called the Southern Route, but Amtrak, in a fit of cost cutting, decided to scrap passenger service, which requires a higher level of track maintenance, in favor of hauling coal, the route being leased, I think, to a freight company. A recent move to reinstate the Southern Route was debated in the state Legislature, but didn’t seem to have enough financial support. To be fair, Amtrak’s government subsidy shrinks every year, the current administration wanting to dump all but the Northeast Corridor, Boston to Washington D.C., which has high commuter traffic.
So, in order to avoid high gas prices and airport delays, the rail trip, with one economy sleeper ticket (dinner included), one coach ticket (sleep sitting up, no din-din) a hotel room for one night and a bus ticket would cost $707, plus the cab fair and four days).
I give up. A one-way Horizon/Alaska Airline ticket Burbank to Bozeman with transfer in Seattle is $169.80 (including AAA’s ticket-writing fee). Even with a ride in morning traffic to the airport, two hours for security check, undetermined waiting on the tarmac, about an hour and a half to change planes at Sea-Tac, scheduled arrival in Bozeman is 5 p.m. (mountain time is one hour later), the whole deal is done in one short day.
So I will suffer the indignity of carry-on searches, shoe removal, excessive wanding and pat-down because my hip fracture repair sets off the alarm bell, confiscation of my nail file, tweezers and suspicious bottles of shampoo, moisturizer and eye drops (all in containers of 3 oz. or less, encased in clear plastic quart size zip bag).
So the next time someone says there isn’t enough interest in passenger rail to justify government funding for Amtrak, remind them that almost all civilized governments support their passenger railways. Canada’s is superb. Europe is wiring for high-speed rail border to border. The result will be decreased emissions, one-fifth the fuel cost for cars or planes and way less hassle.
Let’s suggest that Amtrak funding be reinstated at levels that would allow better scheduling with reasonable connections between major routes. My guess is ridership would soar. And I’d be first in line.