For most people in New York, the Long Island Railroad is either the bane of their commuter existence or the one thing standing between Manhattan and partying on the beach. But writer Emily Meg Weinstein decided she'd ride the train just for the hell of it--and think about her upbringing in the suburbia it serves.
Her essay today in The Morning News gives a blow-by-blow account of a ride from Port Washington into Manhattan, as seen from her seat on the 11:11. Not far into her trip:
There is a bay--the bay across which Jay Gatsby gazed longingly at Daisy Buchanan, I'm always quick to point out.
Later Weinstein passes through Great Neck:
The kind of town where an enormous banner proclaiming "BOTOX IS HERE" is not considered to be in poor taste.
After the jump, we've Google Mapped all of her stops, and linked to Jaunted contributor Ben Hancock's guide to surviving the suburbs for you LIRR warriors.
It's hardly shocking that as gas prices rise, more commuters are looking to public transit options they may not have considered earlier. But the Amtrak train leading in gains may surprise you: It's not the soup-to-nuts Northeast Regional or the posh Acela trains, but the Downeaster, the Portland-to-Boston route which picked up 947 extra passengers a day over last year.
We're pleased that we may have reached the tipping point for new public transportation options to be developed nationwide, although the initial result will just be more crowding. (A Midwestern friend of Jaunted says the Milwaukee-Chicago "Hiawatha" service is in dire need of another car per trip, as workers used to driving the 90 miles kick back on the train instead.)
Given the effectiveness of its government, Italy seems like an ideal candidate for private enterprise. But when it comes to the rail service there, we've honestly never been less than impressed. So we're a little surprised to learn that a new private company, Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori, will start running daily trips around Italy by 2011.
NTV plans to use so-called AGV trains developed in France, which are basically next-generation TGVs. In other words, they're fast. A trip from Rome to Milan--which today takes four-and-a-half hours--will be cut to just over three hours. The long haul from Rome to Venice will be shortened by 15 minutes.
Interestingly, the trains will run on existing tracks, which leaves us wondering which service will have priority, the private or the public. Two things the new NTV trains will offer that's certainly new? Internet connections and on-demand TV.
Moscow might be a blossoming tourist destination with pricier hotels than nearly anywhere else, but until now getting into the city from any of the airports has been a bit of a nightmare. But things are looking up.
With a tongue-twister of a name, the Savyolovsky Station--Sheremetyevo Airport Rail Link has just opened, whizzing travelers from Sheremetyevo into downtown Moscow in just 35 minutes--half the time it used to take on the bus.
Of course, now you miss out on sitting on that smoggy gray traffic jam known as Leningradskoye Highway, but don't worry, it'll still probably take you ages to get through the immigration line.
England doesn't seem that big when you look at it on a map, but a journey from London down to the pretty southwest areas of Cornwall and Devin does take a while. Now that rail company First Great Western has revamped the London to Penzance sleeper train route, however, you don't have to waste time getting there.
This route's been there a while, but now that it's had a £2 million ($3.9 million) upgrade, Great Western is hoping to get a whole heap more passengers. A designer who's worked for Porsche has done new interiors for the trains and all fixtures, fittings and even the toilets have been completely upgraded.
The last time we traveled this route, it was neat and clean enough and very practical for saving a night's accommodation cost--now we're keen to try it again and do it in style instead. With a romantic name like the Night Riviera Sleeper, how can we go wrong?
We're big fans of American rail travel, even though it breaks our hearts sometimes, so we greet the news of Amtrak's surging ticket revenues and passenger miles with cautious optimism. As the New York Times points out, skyrocketing prices for gasoline and jet fuel are encouraging more people to travel by rail, leaving the beleaguered national train company scrambling to keep up with the record-breaking ridership.
While decades of quasi-socialist neglect, financial constraints and an atrophying infrastructure have made the legacy carrier less nimble than it ought to be, here's hoping that they can hold it together long enough for passengers to appreciate the many sublime pleasures of riding the rails. Spacious seats, plenty of room for luggage, no need to remove shoes or dump liquids before boarding and the ability to be just about as drunk as you feel like just might make riders demand the much-needed improvements necessary to bring Amtrak up to the level of, say, European trains in the 1970's.
Still, travelers on Amtrak's most popular routes are in for crowded conditions this summer. Tickets for the daily New York-to-New Orleans Crescent Train are already sold out from July 5-8, and the Seattle-to-Vancouver line is filling up fast. So make your reservations soon, lest you be forced to stay home, or *gulp* take the bus.
The US House of Representatives has just passed a $14.9 billion bill to finance Amtrak for the next five years. It also includes a provision for another $1.5 billion of federal money for the Washington, DC Metro.
Though President Bush says he won't sign the measure, the bill passed with a big enough majority that the House would likely override any veto. Jaunted frienemy Rep. James Oberstar helped craft the bill, along with longtime Amtrak critic Rep. John Mica, who's apparently finally sick of paying $4 a gallon for gas.
A similar bill has already passed the Senate, but the House version includes a requirement that the Department of Transportation seek proposals from private companies to build a high-speed rail line along the Eastern Seaboard.
From June 14 through June 17, Amtrak will be shutting down train service between New York and Boston. The cancellations are the result of repair work being done on the 90-year-old Thames River Bridge outside of New London, Connecticut. Train riders from Washington, DC, New Haven and Providence will also be affected by the service changes, as they won't be able to pass through New Haven during those four days.
Amtrak is describing the repairs as "one of the largest engineering endeavors in company history." The project will replace a drawbridge section of the span with a modern "vertical lift" that lets boats go by. The stretch of the Thames River under the bridge is constantly busy thanks to passing Coast Guard ships and submarines, yes submarines, from the nearby New London Naval Submarine Base.
Amtrak says the repairs will "minimize train delays" along the busy Northeast Corridor. Having had the experience of being held up at the bridge because of a sub crossing, this seems like a good idea. But it's going to be a mess when folks going from New York to Boston are stuck with nothing but the Chinatown bus or, even worse, Greyhound during the construction. Luckily, the repairs are being performed by Cianbro Corporation not Amtrak, so maybe they'll actually get done on time!
