Views From The Train: "The Empire Builder"

This week, less “talking” and more observing as I share some “views from the train” on my recent ride from Seattle to Milwaukee on Amtrak’s “Empire Builder”.

Sure, it’s two days and nights, but I’m booked in a deluxe bedroom and am anxious to see the upper-tier of states that, to me, have always just been “fly over country”.

Puget Sound: Minutes after leaving Seattle, we run right alongside the beach. I see families walking their dogs, fishing boats brimming with their catch.

Into the Cascade Mountains and Stevens Pass, 4000 feet up, through the longest (7.9 miles) rail tunnel in the US. Still plenty of snow up here, but nothing like what’s to come.

Leavenworth Washington: 15% of the nation’s apples are grown in this one valley and in late April it is awash in blossoms. As far as the eye can see, neat rows of apple trees are festooned with delicate white flowers in the fading sunlight. Oh to be a honey bee!

Two Tylenol PM’s help me sleep. My bedroom is comfy but not for the claustrophobic. The only time I awake is when we’re not moving, stopped in Spokane where the other half of our train, originating from Portland OR, joins us.

The next morning we awake to four feet of snow in Whitefish Montana. After breakfast in the diner, it’s time to explore our eight car train. The sleepless from Seattle are still sprawled across coach seats. As we travel thru spectacular snow-capped peaks, one passenger sits watching a movie on his laptop, oblivious to the scenery.

A retired railroad guy regales me with stories of his days running steam locomotives, while a couple from Fargo ND tries to persuade me that they don’t really have accents like in that movie. Oh yah, eh?

No signal on my Blackberry, but a local paper is brought on board: “The Daily Inter Lake – Serving The Flathead Since 1869”. On the front page, news of yesterday’s amazing spring snowfall is still all too present out the window. On page two, a reminder that Friday is the deadline to apply for hunting permits to take moose and mountain goats.

I venture downstairs for a hot shower as we careen along welded track at 65 miles an hour. Try that on JetBlue!

My radio scanner crackles with automated “hot box” detectors reading off the number of axles scanned followed by a reassuring “no defects” and “temperature 25 degrees”.

Cutbank Montana: population 3171, 25 miles from Canada and a million miles from anywhere. This is why they call it “Big Sky Country”. We’ve gone from the Rockies to the prairies, the snow covered fields merging with the white clouds on the distant horizon. There’s no “here” here.

This is Indian territory, and what’s left of the reservations look like Appalachia without the pretty mountains. Trailers, abandoned trucks, trash strewn about and miles of nothingness. Hardly majestic. Mostly depressing.

In coach there are many Indians, moving across their country. This train isn’t just a land cruise for retirees but a vital transportation link for dozens of small towns long abandoned by even Greyhound.

Montana merges into North Dakota and we look forward to a servicing stop in the “big city” of Minot, population 37,745. While walking the length of the train I discover we’ve been hauling a private rail car, complete with observation platform. Crowds of curious passengers and towns-folk (not to mention a few “foamers”) snap pictures, but the sole inhabitant of the Soo Line business car doesn’t invite us in.

In the diner, a retired Schlitz worker heading to a reunion in Milwaukee (made famous by his suds!) complains he can’t get a beer with dinner. An ex-Canadian Navy guy regales me with stories of his last long-distance train ride… in 1955, on the way to basic training. Chris, our sleeping car attendant, chats with his 20-something buddies by cell phone planning his summer music festival itinerary. One perk of his job… free Amtrak travel.

A restless night and a long detour around still-flooded Fargo ND, we awake in St Paul MN. From here we follow the Mississippi, La Crosse and Wisconsin rivers to Milwaukee where I get off to catch a flight home.

This isn’t Amtrak’s most scenic trans-continental run, but it’s one of the most vital… connecting people to their work, their relatives and the rest of their country. I have a better understanding of the nation’s heartland thanks to this run.

But I’m also glad to get home.

NOTE: For a multimedia view of why folks loving riding the rails, see this link from The New York Times.

It's All About Affordable Housing

Whether by car, by train or on a bike, the reason we must commute is that, most often, we don’t live where we work. So any discussion of our transportation problems must include an understanding of our housing crisis in this area.

A recent report showed that housing in lower Fairfield County is the most expensive in the nation. You need an income of $70,000 just to afford a two bedroom apartment in the Stamford – Norwalk corridor.

So, people who come to work here can only afford to live further afield. Their daily drives / rides contribute to our congestion. The solution? More affordable housing!

A recent conference sponsored by SWRPA held some startling examples in that poster-boy of affluence, Greenwich. This 67 square mile city of 61,000 has 5545 town employees… teachers, cops, firefighters and the like. However, 67% of those workers don’t live in Greenwich, but commute daily from Danbury, Bridgeport, Westchester and even Long Island.

They spend an average of 103 minutes per day just getting to and from work, paying more than $2000 a year for gas. Combined, they add 15,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, just by their commuting.

In a city where the median home price is $2 million, the average Greenwich city worker makes $65,000. And because these teachers, civil servants and such have to come so far, they have to be paid more. The average teacher in Greenwich earns $12,338 a year more than their counterparts elsewhere in the state. These higher wages cost city taxpayers almost $19 million a year. But their larger paychecks come at the cost of lost time and expense on the road.

The Greenwich schools spend $10,000 to $15,000 recruiting and training each new teacher. But after five years of commuting (75% of the 912 teachers don’t live in Greenwich), they burn out, leave and find jobs elsewhere. Between 1998 and 2007, 581 teachers left Greenwich for reasons other than retirement and 81% of them had less than eight years on the job.

EMS workers in Greenwich have it even worse, averaging 151 minutes (2 ½ hours!) commute time. Just how fresh and ready for life-saving work do you think you’d be with a commute like that?

Greenwich is not unique. All of the towns on “the Gold Coast” rely on importing personnel from far afield. Schools in Darien often announce “snow days” not because its roads are impassable, but because teachers can’t drive through the snows farther north from communities like Danbury where can afford to live.

And what about the people that bag your groceries, clean your home or pump your gas? Where do you think they live? Just drive the Boston Post Road some morning and you’ll see them waiting for the bus.

Fairfield County has its own “migrant workers”. We couldn’t live with out them, but apparently we don’t want to live with them. Just listen to the local debates about adding “affordable housing” in these affluent towns. Whether because of their nationality or economic status, the expressed aversion to “those people” living in “our” towns is clearly xenophobic if not racist.

So how do we solve our transportation problems? Well, one solution is clearly related to affordable housing. Allow folks to live closer to their jobs and they won’t have to be in that car in front of you on I-95 or the Merritt at rush hour.

Free Parking Isn't Free

Our obsession with automobiles is not only creating gridlock and ruining the quality of our air, but it’s eating up our real estate and sending land costs upward. Because, once we drive our cars off the crowded highways, we assume it’s our constitutional right to find “free parking”.

Trust me: whether at rail stations or stores, parking comes at a price paid in more than just dollars.

For decades, city planners and zoning regulations have shared with Detroit in a conspiracy to deliver on that dream. Consider the following:

According to the industry standard-setting Institute of Transportation Engineers, there are 266 kinds of businesses which should be zoned to require a minimum amount of parking. Quoting from the ITE “bible”, religious convents must have one parking space for every ten nuns in residence. Hello? The residents aren’t going anywhere! Why do they need parking? Couldn’t the convents find better use for their land?

Or consider hotels. Why are parking regulations based on requiring enough parking for the few nights each year when the hotel is sold out, rather that the majority of nights when occupancy is much less? Would we require a movie theater to require parking for an every-seat-filled blockbuster when its more typical offerings fill far fewer seats?

Just drive up the Boston Post Rd and see for yourself. Due to zoning regulations, many shopping malls devote 60% of their land to parking and only 40% to buildings. Imagine what that does to the costs of what they sell.

Desperate to attract folks back to their decaying downtowns, some cities are putting more land into parking than to all other land uses combined. A Buffalo NY City Council member commented a few years ago: “There will be lots of places to park. There just won’t be a whole lot to do there.”

Last week I drove through downtown New Britain observing empty stores and sidewalks next to a gigantic ten storey parking lot. They “built it”, but nobody came.

In fact, the cities that have done the best jobs of economic revitalization aren’t the ones that provided the most parking… they’re the ones that provided the least. The vitality of towns and cities requires people… walking the streets, going into shops and interacting… not scurrying from car to shop to car to home.

In his recent book “The High Cost of Free Parking”, UCLA’s Donald Shoup recounts the following tale of two cities:

Both San Francisco and Los Angeles opened new concert halls a few years back. The one in LA included a $10 million, six story parking garage for 2,100 cars. In San Francisco there was no parking built… saving the developers millions. After each concert, the LA crowd heads for their cars and drives away. But in San Francisco, patrons leave the hall, walk the streets and spend money in local restaurants, bars and bookstores. Guess which city has benefited most from its new arts center?

Why are Connecticut’s towns slaves to antiquated zoning mentalities that assume all humans come with four tires rather than two legs? Why do we waste precious land on often-empty parking spots instead of badly needed affordable housing?

Clearly, our transportation planners need to work much more closely with economic developers and sociologists to rethink what it is that we really need in our cities and towns.

We have become mindless slaves to car-obsessed planners for whom no vista is better than miles of open asphalt, be it highways or parking spaces.

"The Train Nuts"

Folks in the railroad industry refer to rail fans as “foamers”, because they supposedly foam at the mouth when they see any kind of train. When they move in groups, radio scanners on their belt and cameras at the ready, they seem to be harmless practitioners of an eccentric hobby.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I love trains. But I don’t “spot” them, recording car numbers in a small book. I read rail magazines, but I don’t know the number of axles on an FL9 locomotive or the running time of The Broadway Limited in 1942.

For me, trains are a means to an end… a transportation option, not a hobby.

Not all “rail fans” are transit advocates… a point I learned last weekend when I was asked to speak to the regional meeting of NARP, the National Association of Rail Passengers, about the work of the CT Rail Commuter Council.

NARP is a great organization and I’ve been a member for many years. Their President, Ross Capon, works tirelessly in Washington to promote rail alternatives to roads. But if this meeting was any indication, their 23,000 members don’t all live up to the group’s name.

Picture this hotel ballroom in New London, filled with balding white guys (like me). But there’s nobody of color (aside from the waiters) and the only women are dutiful wives along to support their husbands’ hobby, knitting all through the meeting. And this audience is supposed to represent rail passengers?

Where were the students, the business men, the handicapped… the folks who really take trains?

Capon gave a great speech about the many changes in Washington breathing new life into rail: increased funding for Amtrak, new initiatives to force freight rail lines to expedite passenger trains, even discussions about ten new high-speed rail corridors across the country.

Another NARP officer spoke of the crazy plans by NJ Transit to build new tunnels under the Hudson River which would dead-end at a new underground station for Garden State commuters instead of continuing on to Grand Central.

But when I spoke about Connecticut’s sorry history with commuter rail, the audience just didn’t get it.

Sure, they seemed to appreciate the slide show of the horrors of our aging fleet, broken down stations and over-crowded trains. They listened politely when I told of building grassroots and political support for improved service. And they clearly understood how important the new M8 cars will be. But during the Q&A it was clear I was dealing with a group of foamers, not passenger rail advocates.

“Why not build high-speed rail through Worcester Mass.?” I was asked. “Why should we when Acela already runs to Boston,” I replied.

“Did you know that the New Haven used to run from Waterbury to Boston,” asked another guy, handing me a photocopy of an old timetable. Nice historical touch, I thought, but why does that matter now that half the tracks are gone?

“Why not run double-deck cars from New Haven to Boston,” a third guy asked. “Why not add capacity where we really need it,” I impatiently replied. Foamers!

If NARP is to truly represent rail passengers it must get beyond these rail fans’ fantasies and nostalgia for a bygone era. We’ll never have parlor cars from New Canaan again nor ride the “Twentieth Century Limited”. But we can improve Amtrak and expand Shore Line East to Providence. We can refurbish our aging fleet of cars and keep fares affordable. We can add commuter rail to Hartford and beyond.

Rail advocates must be taken seriously, not seen as eccentric hobbyists. And NARP should do more to really represent all rail passengers, not just “foamers”.

Sound Barriers: A Waste of Money?

One and a half million dollars a mile. The cost of building a new lane on I-95? Hardly! That’s more like $20 million. No, “$1.5 million dollars a mile” would be the cost of building new sound barriers on that crowded highway, according to recent testimony by CDOT Commissioner Joseph Marie.

This won’t win me many friends among my neighbors in Darien, but I just don’t see that they should be asking the government to subsidize their peace and quiet. After all, most of them bought houses near the highway benefiting from speedy access to the roadway and should have known full-well that being that close would subject them to noise.

Do you have sympathy for those who buy homes near airport runways, then complain about the jets? Neither do I.

The first sections of what became I-95 were built in Darien in 1954, long before most current residents came to town. Sure, traffic has increased on I-95 over the years. We are well over the planned capacity of this interstate highway. But thinking the solution to highway noise is to create a walled concrete canyon through our coastal communities paid for by others, is just selfish and short-sighted.

I live about 1500 feet from I-95. On a quiet summer’s night I can hear the trucks as they whiz by at 70 mph, especially when they’re “Jake braking” (illegal in many states). And yes, there is a wooden sound barrier between me and the road which helps a bit. I try to think of the noise as like surf at the beach. But when shopping for my current home, I knew that highway noise was the price I would pay for being so near an on-ramp.

Some neighbors in my, and many other towns, want the state or Uncle Sam to build miles and miles of new sound barriers to cushion their karmic calm. But why should the few benefit at the expense of so many?

Can we really argue that someone in Tolland or Torrington should pay for sound barriers in Westport or Greenwich?

Sound-barriers seem to me to be wasted money. They don’t reduce accidents, improve safety or solve congestion. Two miles of sound-barriers would buy a new M8 rail car on Metro-North, taking 100 passengers off the road. And sound-barriers are really sound-reflectors, not absorbers, just bouncing the sound off to bother others.
Consider these alternatives:

1) Sound-proof the homes. This has worked well for neighbors of big airports and is probably cheaper than sound-proofing entire neighborhoods. And insulation against noise also insulates against heat loss, saving energy.

2) Explore rubberized asphalt. Reduce the road noise at its source, literally where the “rubber meets the road”. Using this new road surface, some highways have seen a 12 decibel reduction in noise. Rubberized asphalt also reuses 12 million junked tires each year.

3) Pay for it yourself. Let neighborhood associations affected by road noise create special taxing zones to collect funds to build sound barriers they’ll benefit from, both with reduced noise and resulting increased home valuations.

Stamford / Darien state Senator Andrew McDonald points out a real contradiction in state and federal rules about new sound-barriers: they can only be built at taxpayer expense when the road in question is widened. Is that good public policy… to encourage bigger, wider roads carrying more traffic just to get “free” sound barriers? Clearly, we should be funding mass transit alternatives, not discussing the folly of adding a fourth lane to I-95.

I can think of any number of better places to spend federal dollars to improve mass transit than sound barriers. Can’t you?

Money Saving Travel Tips

In this economy we’re all looking to save money, especially on travel. So I’ve assembled a few tips I’ve learned over the years to keep you on the go while still saving dough.

Let’s consider a business day-trip to Washington, planned and booked one day in advance.

THE AIR SHUTTLES: You can’t beat the convenience, but it comes at a weighty cost. The walk-up one-way fare on the US Air Shuttle from LaGuardia is now $329 in coach (and $500 in First Class!). Given that flying time, gate to gate, is only an hour, this has to rank as one of the most expensive flights you can take out of NYC. But did you know that US Air is now part of the Star Alliance network so it code-shares its flights with United Airlines? A round-trip on the same US Air flights, booked through UAL, is $464. (PS: my last Shuttle flights were empty and even though pre-booked, the agent told me there’d be no problem catching an earlier or later flight.)

ALTERNATE AIRPORTS: If you’re willing to fly out of JFK, the savings are amazing… roundtrip on JetBlue is $116 and on Delta $137. And depending on where you’re heading in DC, flying into Dulles might save you time and money.

AMTRAK: Any regular reader of this column knows that I think Amtrak is the only way to “fly”, even to Washington. And you have plenty of trains to choose from departing New Haven, Bridgeport and Stamford. The high-speed Acela would be my first pick, but Business Class (there is no “coach” fare) would set you back $412 roundtrip. And First Class on Acela is an additional $103 each way, adding up to $618 roundtrip.

A cheaper Am-alternative are the non-Acela “Northeast Regional” trains. Older, slower and making more stops, they’ll get you to DC in four hours and 35 minutes versus Acela’s three hours and fifty minutes… but coach is only $206 roundtrip. (I’d skip the $36 each way ‘upgrade’ to Business Class on these trains. All you get is a bit more leg-room and free sodas.)

AMTRAK DISCOUNTS: Amtrak rarely discounts its flagship Acela service, but it does offer AAA and NARP (Natl Assoc of Rail Passengers) members a 10% discount on bookings made three days in advance. Students, Seniors and Veterans can save 15%. Kids (age 2 – 15) travel half-price.

Amtrak’s “Guest Rewards” (frequent traveler) program is fabulous… and free. Rewards include free travel and, for heavy users, free upgrades for First Class, even on Acela. Last year I took a free trip, Chicago to LA, in a Deluxe Bedroom for two days and nights (including meals) on The Southwest Chief for free! If I’d paid for the trip it would’ve cost more than $1000.

WEB RESOURCES: My favorite online resource for comparing air fares (as well as hotels and car rentals) is www.kayak.com, a Norwalk-based travel website. (In the interest of full-disclosure, they’re a consulting client of mine… but that’s not why I give them a plug.) Kayak shows you all the flights on all the airlines, not just a few, so you can prioritize by schedule, airport or fare.

What’s your favorite money-saving tip for travel? Drop me a line and I’ll share it with others. Just e-mail me at jim@mediatrainer.tv

"Emergency Landing!"

Taking off out of LaGuardia last week, my thoughts were of the recent US Air crash in the Hudson River. Maybe it was because I was flying the same airline and the same kind of jet. Or because I’ve always had a fear of flying.

But a couple of years ago, I was on a flight that really made an emergency landing. It wasn’t frightening and, in fact, made me feel a little safer in the skies.

Delta flight 222, a half-empty 767 bound from Atlanta to La Guardia, was more than half-way to its destination when I heard a beeping sound. Assuming some idiot had left his cell phone on, I wasn’t too concerned. Then, more beeping, this time from the rear of the plane. Concerned flight attendants scurried around trying to find the source. It turns out that most of the plane’s smoke detectors were going off, simultaneously.

There was no smell of smoke. (Believe me… I was sniffing furiously), but the captain whipped on the seat belt sign and said we were diverting. “A cockpit warning light”, was the way she put it, adding that she just wanted to “be safe.” Sounded good to me.

As we decended rapidly from 35,000 feet, dodging the thunderstorms, she told us that we’d be landing in Richmond. Fine… It’s a small airport and this is a big plane … just get us down!

During the decent, she reminded us to follow the instructions of the flight attendants “who are really onboard for your safety.” Really… not just to offer us pretzels for dinner? The attendants remained calm, but not having a script to work from, had to ad lib their instructions.

“Stay seated. Don’t get up until told to. Don’t open the emergency exits unless instructed. If an emergency evacuation is necessary, leave all luggage on board. And when we land, don’t be dismayed at the emergency equipment that we will see…”

Sure enough, Richmond Airport’s entire Fire Rescue Department turned out to greet us, racing down the runway as we landed. When we touched down (probably the first 767 ever to land at RIC), they surrounded us, nozzles aimed at our craft. With no smoke evident, we taxied near the terminal and stopped.

Air stairs were brought up and slowly, we all deplaned, walking past respirator-wearing firefighters who’d come on board. A short walk across the tarmac and we were in the terminal.

We all stood by, noses pressed to the windows watching the fire crews as they inspected our plane, running hoses into the baggage hold, but finding neither smoke nor fire.

While hoards of day-tripping business-people whipped out their cell phones and Blackberries, trying to find another flight, I consulted my Amtrak timetable and contemplated a long train ride home the next morning.

Angst was everywhere, but surprisingly there was no “air rage”. All the passengers were pretty mellow about the situation. In fact, we bonded. We all applauded when one guy’s cell phone rang and he learned that his wife had just delivered twins.
Soon, a Delta DC-9 arrived and a couple hours later we were on our way home to LGA, arriving just before a midnight curfew.

I never did find out what was wrong with our original plane. A small story on AP just referenced the “cockpit warning light,” but I knew better.

Fast forward to this week and I’m listening to a replay of the air traffic controller and US Air crew handling the emergency water landing and I’m struck with one thought… maybe two.

Facing a potential disaster, both the pilots and the controllers sounded amazingly calm and professional. They followed their training and nobody died.
Maybe flying isn’t as scary as I’d always thought.