Trains, planes, & pains: what's the best way to get from point A to point B? Amtrak's high-speed rail takes on the airlines

Sierra, Nov-Dec, 2003 by Blair Tindall

CONTRAILS SLASH DAWN'S ROSY LIGHT high above Manhattan. Headlights stream down the West Side Highway, and the morning's first ferry churns across the Hudson. I'm up early, rushing to a lunch meeting 215 miles away in Boston. I'll catch Amtrak's new high-speed train to Massachusetts, then fly home on the Delta shuttle. My schizophrenic itinerary has a purpose: I want to compare the two modes of travel head-to-head, assessing comfort, practicality, and cost--both to my bank account and to society, in environmental impacts.

Not many travelers--especially those on business trips--consider environmental effects when crafting their itineraries. Yet the societal benefits gained by putting green issues on the short list with legroom, arrival time, and quality of onboard peanuts could add up quickly: The kind of short hop I'm taking makes up 20 percent of all miles traveled.

In the 1970s, diesel trains sputtered between New York City and my North Carolina hometown. Leaning perilously on decaying tracks, they crept south past cotton fields and tobacco barns. Once, the engine hit a cow and later caught fire, extending an 8-hour trip to a 14-hour overnight. A few years later, a grueling 5-hour ride to Boston was ruining a budding long-distance romance. I gave up and hailed cabs to LaGuardia instead.

But recently I shot 345 miles overland from Osaka to central Tokyo in just 2.5 hours. Now it's time to give Amtrak's latest, fastest train a fair test. At 8:30, I leave Times Square. I could take a taxi, or one of seven subway lines to centrally located Penn Station. Instead, I hoof the eight blocks past shuttered theaters, claiming my $119 Internet-booked ticket from Amtrak's machine ten minutes later. Waiting to board the 9:03, I settle into a sleek Acela Express lounge. For the first time ever in Penn Station, I relax my grip on my purse; only ticketed Acela passengers are admitted to its Plexiglas-enclosed waiting area.

The room is crowded, a reflection of the fact that Amtrak's share of the Boston-New York market has jumped from 17 to 33 percent since 1997. I eavesdrop. Some riders are spooked by post-September 11 air travel. One man waves a Wall Street Journal article about how layoffs of mechanics may threaten aircraft maintenance. (Autos aren't so safe either--highway deaths accounted for 94 percent of transportation fatalities in 2001, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.) And how 'bout the weather? When blizzards lashed the Northeast last winter, Amtrak was the only thing moving. Between New York and Boston, 90 percent of scheduled trains soldiered on, carrying stranded motorists and fliers.

Passenger rail once thrived in America. The introduction of steam locomotives in the early 1800s inspired long-distance travel and settlement of the western United States. But in the 1930s, automobiles began honking their siren call. Railways running passenger rail were decimated by the Depression. By the 1950s, affordable sedans sailed down Eisenhower's new interstate highways. Finally, the rail lines unloaded their unprofitable human cargo when Congress created Amtrak in 1970 in an effort to save passenger rail service from the cost-cutter's scrap heap. Still, passenger rail has teetered near extinction as Americans continue to opt for jets or cars and funding for Amtrak remains insufficient to produce a viable system.

But car culture has soured. By 2000, congestion cost urbanites some $68 billion annually, according to a Texas Transportation Institute study of 75 urban areas. Even in rural areas, the amount of time drivers spend stalled in traffic has quadrupled in the last two decades. Trains offer an alternative to gridlock, and rail may see a resurgence yet.

Once our train is announced, some 120 riders--less than half the Acela's capacity--board quickly, funneling down a modernistic escalator sheathed in stainless steel. There's no security check, and we're rolling before anyone stows a bag. I settle into a comfortable seat and look around. More starship Enterprise than Orient Express, the Acela's slate-blue decor features sliding doors, substantial footrests, and outlets for laptop computers. Some 15 minutes later, we're chugging through Queens, still far below the Acela's top speed. But it gets harder to read the lettering on roadside signs as we begin to outpace cars on the Bronx River Parkway.

In the cafe car, a businessman carries three steaming coffees to his conference table. I lean away, anticipating latte in my lap. But he walks smoothly, without lurching sideways. "It's the tilting technology," says a Pennsylvania TV executive who rides the Acela weekly for work. Because existing track is so curvy, Acela trains compensate by leaning 4.2 degrees around the bends. If the Acela ran on dedicated track with wider spacing, concrete foundations, and broad curves, we could travel 150 miles per hour and reach Boston in under two hours. But this 100-year-old infrastructure--much owned and maintained by commuter rail lines--won't support Acela technology for most of the ride. We slow to 20 mph where a spaghetti of tracks converges in New Rochelle. Later, I get a glimpse of the future when the Acela blurs to 150 mph along an 18-mile stretch of cutting-edge track north of Providence.