Travel Trends: Train travel in the USA

by Gadling Staff on

Paul Theroux, the great American travel writer, once said, “Almost anything is possible in a train” — and that still holds true today. While the U.S. has not embraced rail travel as a primary means of transportation for several decades, a resurgence is growing. Passengers frustrated with airline delays and rising costs, the high cost of gasoline and road construction are beginning to give train travel another look.

These Aren’t Your Parent’s Trains
Without a lot of fanfare, Amtrak, which operates most of the passenger rail system in the U.S., has quietly been making small improvements. While capacity and routes have actually decreased since 1985, today’s passenger trains tout high-speed wireless access (on some routes), no baggage fees for up to three checked bags and the ability to bring golf clubs, bicycles and ski equipment. Some business class seats also have electrical outlets, conference tables and complimentary newspapers.

On longer routes there are dining and sleeping cars offering first class dining and turn down service. An Auto Train which runs from Lorton, Virginia to Sanford, Florida allows passengers to bring their vehicle along for the ride. It is arguably the longest passenger train in the world and is pitched as a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly alternative to driving for families on the East Coast heading down to Disney World.

Improvements for 2010 and Beyond
According to Bruce Richardson, President of the United Rail Passenger Alliance, “Even if train travel evolves at lightning speed over the next 10 years, it will still not be at the same point in North America it was in 1956.” The U.S. is severely behind other nations in providing high speed rail infrastructure and Americans are just now beginning to consider it as a mode of transportation again.

In looking at statistics provided by the Federal Railroad Administration, rail travel has fairly consistently increased over the past 25 years (see below). While there are no federally-approved forecasted numbers for 2010 and beyond, the expectation is that passenger rail travel will continue to increase every year. (For the purposes of this article, Gadling forecasted passenger traffic for 2010 and 2011, as shown in the graph below.)


As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Federal Government allocated $8 billion for high-speed and intercity passenger rail (HSIPR). In addition to that, the HSIPR Program includes an additional $92 million from an existing state grant program (see below for the allocation of money by state).Unfortunately, most of this money is going to a backlog of rehabilitations and upgrades of old Amtrak routes that have been needed for years — rather than to new routes — and some of the money is being spent on new maintenance facilities as well as IT projects. But still, improvements are being made:

  • In California, the Pacific Surfliner Route which runs from San Diego to San Luis Obispo with stops in Los Angeles is getting $51 million to build a new track between Fullerton and Commerce to ease congestion and upgrade the speed to 110 mph.
  • A whopping $590 million is allocated to the Cascade Service route which goes from Eugene, OR to Seattle, WA with routes to Portland, OR. Infrastructure improvements will allow for 2 additional round trips from Seattle to Portland (there are currently 4).
  • A few new routes are in the works. The Hiawatha route from Milwaukee to Madison, Wisconsin will be extended and have 3 new stations in Brookfield, Oconomowoc and Watertown. A new 3C Route in Ohio will go from Cleveland to Columbus to Dayton and Cincinnati.
  • Other existing routes are getting signals, stations and other infrastructure type improvements.

So where do these improvements leave us? We’re still way behind where we need to be for Americans to consider rail travel as a cost effective, first-choice of transportation. Existing routes need to be extended, more daily frequencies added and new long distance routes implemented. Amtrak routes that were discontinued in the 1990’s such as the Sunset Limited, which ran from New Orleans to Orlando, and the Desert Wind route between Chicago and Los Angeles need to be put back into operation to give travelers enough choices to ride the rails.

Data sources:

See more Travel Trends.

Daily Pampering: India’s new ultra-luxury Maharaja train service

by Melanie Nayer on

Travel through India just got a little more glamorous.

Earlier this week, India officially launched its most luxurious and expensive train service. The cost: a minimum $800 a night (the presidential suite will run you $2,500 a night, but for that price you get your carriage and private bathtub).

The new Maharaja train accommodates only 84 passengers, who each get their own suite complete with private bathrooms and plasma televisions. There are two restaurants serving Indian and Western food, a bar, card tables and an observation lounge on the train.

The new train service is part of a luxurious family including the Deccan Odyssey in western Maharashtra, the Palace on Wheels in Rajasthan and the Golden Chariot in southern Karnataka.

Want more? Get your daily dose of pampering right here.

Weather and travel issues dominate UK web use during storm

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Brits set records last week, as nasty weather sent traffic to transportation and weather websites sky-high. For the week ending January 9, 2010, according to Hitwise Intelligence, weather websites were responsible for 1.5 percent of all internet traffic in the United Kingdom. That’s three times higher than the level reached the same week a year earlier. It also beat the last snowstorm, in February 2009, by 26.9 percent. BBC Weather was #12 on the list of all websites visited in the UK, and the Met Office was #22. There were plenty of peeks at how the trains were doing, as the National Rail Enquiries website ranked 56th among all British websites.

Snow dominated the search engines, as well. UK web users logged more than 146,000 searches containing the word “snow” during the four-week period ending January 9, 2010. “Snow forecast” was the most popular. Snow-related searches were up 378 percent compared to the same period the year before. Searches for “snow chains” grew by a factor of 23, with “snow boots” up by a factor of six.

Hell train hits Chicago 19 hours late

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


The passengers who got stuck in the Channel Tunnel recently had an awful situation, but was it worse than what the passengers who just pulled into Chicago endured? Those who endured the Eurostar incident were stuck for 15 hours without food, water or information. The passengers on Amtrak‘s California Zephyr reached Chicago 19 hours late. One called it “the train from hell,” with local news outlet WMAQ saying the passengers hit town “tired, hungry and stinky.” Severe weather was among the problems that caused the delay, with a pass between two hills in Nebraska suffering from snow drifts more than two stories high. Also, the train hit a pickup truck that got in the way in Iowa.

Food were in short supply on the train, and some of the passengers were pissed that the information from Amtrak flowed about as readily as the water on the train (there wasn’t much). And, it seems goodwill still remains scarce. Though Amtrak is offering hotel rooms to passengers who need them, refunds will only be paid on a case-by-case basis.

Obituary: The Orient Express

by Sean McLachlan on

I screwed up big time.

I’ve always wanted to ride the Orient Express, the famous Paris-to-Istanbul sleeper train made famous by countless movies and novels. It’s an elegant train steeped in glamor and history. Ever since it opened in 1883 it was the way to go to the East. It’s been one of my travel goals for as long as I can remember, but I figured I could always put it off until next year because it would always be there.

Today was it’s last day.

Operators say it’s a victim of competing rail services and cheap airline carriers, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. I think it’s a victim of a corrosive effect I’ve been seeing in travel culture for twenty years now–the concept that cheaper and faster is always better. In an age when you can fly from Paris to Istanbul for less than a hundred bucks–hell, sometimes less than fifty–leaving after breakfast and arriving in time for lunch, why would you want to spend a few hundred dollars and a couple of days rattling across Eastern Europe to get to the same place?

Because the trip is more about the journey than the destination. Because you can’t see the details of the land from an airplane window. Because people talk to each other on trains.

Yes, commentators are pointing out that the route has changed many times over the years, and the train that shut down today didn’t even run the whole way anymore, but that’s like saying that the Parthenon isn’t the real thing because half of the stones are gone. Something old and wonderful has still died.

So next time you think you can leave a dream until “next year”, don’t. You might wake up and find the dream’s over.

CLARIFICATION: There have been a couple of comments saying the Orient Express is still operating. The train that shut down is, indeed, the direct heir of the original Oriental Express, although it had stopped its full service decades ago. Modern companies, such as the Venice-Simplon Orient Express, have used variants of the name but are not the original service. The original Simplon Orient Express opened in 1919, although it too has gone through permutations over the years. For a time there were three “Orient Expresses” running simultaneously, with the Simplon being the second oldest. The original, true “Orient Express” started in 1883. The Venice-Simplon Orient Express is now the closest to the original we have, with vintage carriages from the 1920s and 30s. I’ll have to ride it some day, assuming it doesn’t go out of business too!%Gallery-26075%

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