So, I just got back from another leg of my Honku book tour. I did events at two great bookstores, Politics & Prose in Washington D.C. and Malaprops in Asheville, North Carolina. The trips have been fun and all of the travel has given me lots of good, first-hand insight into the American transportation experience.

Because I planned my trip to Asheville at the last minute, flying was going to cost way too much. So, I opted to take Amtrak instead. I am someone who wants to like the train. I want our country to have a really good, high quality national commuter rail network. There's no reason why we shouldn't and lots of reasons why we should. But, I've got to say, Amtrak is totally pathetic. From the moment I called to get tickets to the last delay just minutes outside of Manhattan, the message from Amtrak was clear: We're Amtrak, and we could care less.

From New York to Washington, I road the Acela. The Acela is Amtrak's high speed express train running up and down the Eastern seaboard. You pay extra to ride it -- it basically costs the same as a plane, but it's fast and roomy and drops you off in the middle of the city. On paper, it's totally worth it. In reality, the Acela isn't fast because it doesn't leave when it's supposed to. My train pulled out of Penn Station more than an hour late. There was hardly even an announcement or anything from the Amtrak folks. The little timetable board flipped to "Delayed" and that was that. It simply felt as though a late Acela is an entirely normal daily occurrence and barely worthy of mention.

The train ride back from Greensboro, North Carolina to New York City was supposed to be a 13 hour trip, 9:40am to 10:30pm. It was two hours longer than that. The train left it's very first station, Charlotte, twenty minutes late and from there it just got later and later. The kicker came at midnight, where just outside of Newark, the last station before Manhattan, we stopped. An announcement told us that there was only one track open and three southbound trains were going to use it before we could go. We pulled in to NYC around 1am. Again, the overall vibe was, essentially: It's out of our control. There's nothing we can do. It happens all the time. Amtrak is late. Whatev.

Having had one previous experience with the Amtrak North Carolinian, I was not surprised by any of this. A couple of months ago I got off a plane at Newark Airport to discover they've got this new rail service called AirLink. I wanted to try it out. So I took this fancy monorail to a train station near the airport. There was no train schedule at the baggage claim but I figured, AirLink, there's got to be at least three or four trains an hour, right? Wrong. There was one train an hour and I had a 45 minute wait til the next one. It wasn't worth going back to the terminal via monorail to catch an expensive limo to sit in traffic for an hour. So, I paid for my New Jersey Transit ticket and waited.

A train pulled in, destination Manhattan. I tried to get on. The conductor wouldn't let me. He tells me, "This isn't New Jersey Transit, this is the Amtrak North Carolinian." I argued and begged. I pointed out that the American Civil War was fought, in part, so that New Jersey and North Carolina could work out deals around issues like this. He was unamused. So I offered to pay an additional fare to get on. By that point I was willing to do just about anything. Money talks. He let me on and the train pulled out (It was nearly empty. There seemed to be no reason not to let people on). A couple minutes later he came back to collect the fare. I asked him how much. He told me $39!!! This is about the same price as an airport limo and keep in mind that I've already paid for the now-useless NJ Transit ticket. I told him I didn't believe it could really be that much, could I see a fare schedule? I was sure $39 was a mistake. In fact, I was pretty sure that he just made up the number and was hoping that I'd pay him cash so that he could pocket the dough. He told me, "Look, I did you a favor letting you on this train." I insisted on seeing the fare in writing. He reached for his walkie talkie and started calling ahead to the police in Newark, Penn Station, the stop between the airport and Manhattan where I'd be dumped if I didn't pay...

So, from the moment I booked my train tickets, my expectations of the North Carolinian were extremely low. I brought food, reading materials, and work to do on the train and made sure that it couldn't possibly make me late to anything. Truly, the lousy service didn't really matter to me. I tend to think we Americans are mostly spoiled and somewhat insane in our expectations and valuation of total convenience above all else. So, I'm not writing this to bitch about the service.

I'm writing because it all just strikes me as a real shame. The train could be (and actually was for a long time) a relatively pleasant, inexpensive, community-friendly, and energy efficient way for Americans to get around the country. And even if we've lost our collective memory about how decent the train was, we can look at other countries around the world and see that the train is still a great way to travel with all kinds of social and econcomic benefits. Yet, because of our obsession with the automobile and all of the money we throw into an increasingly dysfunctional, destructive and obsolete motorist infrastructure, we've essentially relegated our national rail system to Third World status.

Traveling Amtrack, I couldn't help but think of my trip last year to Germany where the timetables on the platforms tell you that the train is going to be rolling in :20, :40, or :60 seconds late. Twenty seconds late! I bet the conductor of the North Carolinian would find that just absolutely hilarious.

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