Eleven years after our first annual visit to see our family in the US, we have this month for the first time “let the train take the strain”. We caught the return Amtrak train from Seattle down the west coast to Portland in Oregon, some 170 miles away. It was a pleasant 3+ hours journey in comfy seats with bags of legroom and plenty of passengers. The two-level coach, which had more the feel of a small apartment, provided superb views over Puget Sound and the forest areas of Oregon.
Cars remain the travel method of choice for most in the US, so we train riders are not typical. The average US citizen takes only 1.3 trips by train a year compared with the 30 taken in the UK. But despite this it’s starting to look like the US is taking issues about congestion, travel modes and CO2 emissions more seriously. Several states like California are developing specific high speed rail policies.
President Obama kicked off the issue in January with a $8 billion plan under the Recovery Act, offering support to schemes giving priority to upgrading existing rail routes. The thinking is that high speed trains mostly on the East and West coast would provide an incentive for more travellers on shorter journeys to leave their cars behind in the garage.
But trans-continental rail travel is a different ball game. It’s a journey of 2400 miles from New York on the east coast to Seattle. Opening up the west took place in three stages. First came the expeditions of Lewis and Clark in 1804-06, followed by the journeying across the plains by the settlers with their horses and wagons. The steam trains arrived in the 1850s and by 1869 the first transcontinental line had been completed. The Great Northern railway finally reached Seattle in 1893.
The railroads created over 100 years ago are still owned by private companies, which concentrate on moving 40% of the nation’s freight slowly around the continent on huge long trains. There’s an inherent conflict here with the needs of high speed passenger trains, which need dedicated lines for a faster service and defined journey times. Providing such high speed routes in Europe and Japan has been a long term investment costing millions of dollars, which are now in the post global financial crisis not available in the US or anywhere else.
This is an area to watch over the next five years and could not only help to reduce US carbon emissions but also provide thousands of jobs for Americans to replace those lost in the motor industry, as it goes into long term decline. In the meantime we’re looking to try out the train next year from Chicago to Seattle.