OP-ED: Dan Zukowski

Amtrak's California Zephyr: The Way West

August 11, 2005

“We simply cannot keep going on sending empty trains clear across the country with no riders.”
-- Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), House floor, June 29, 2005

“Americans don’t like to travel that way anymore.” (referring to long trips by rail)
-- Senator Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Senate floor, March 15, 2005

“Amtrak today clings to routes that have long since faded from use.”
-- U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, Charlotte, N.C. press conference, Feb. 22, 2005

Amid this year’s barrage of anti-Amtrak attacks coming out of Washington, we decided to take a ride on one of the railroad’s long distance trains to see for ourselves if these comments had any merit. We made our reservations online, paid full fare and didn’t tell anyone at Amtrak what we were doing.

So, on Saturday, August 6, 2005, we arrived at Chicago Union Station about an hour before the scheduled departure of our westbound train, the California Zephyr. With a first-class ticket in the sleeping car, we were allowed into the spacious Metropolitan Lounge. It’s the equal of any airline club, the staff was friendly and we enjoyed a free cup of decaf.

About half an hour before train time, we were escorted to the platform. Our sleeper compartment was waiting, clean and stocked with cups, towels, soap and toilet paper. At exactly 1:50 p.m., per schedule, train number 5 slid out of the station for its 2,438 mile journey.

The Zephyr has an illustrious history, and is one of Amtrak’s success stories. It was launched in 1949 as a joint operation of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Denver & Rio Grande Western, and the Western Pacific railroads. It was designed and built as a luxury cruise train, and scheduled to maximize sightseeing of the Colorado Rockies and California High Sierras from its Vista Dome cars. But, by the time Amtrak came into existence in 1971, the California Zephyr was no more.

Amtrak revived a Chicago to Oakland route, but it was not the route of the Zephyr nor did it carry the name. It wasn’t until 1983, when the D&RGW agreed to join Amtrak, that the service and the name could return.

Today’s California Zephyr serves more than 335,000 passengers a year. That’s an average of about 460 riders per train. Our train was sold out. That doesn’t equate to “sending empty trains across the country.”

Saturday’s train consisted of two locomotives and eleven cars. They included three sleepers (one of which also served as dorm space for the train service staff), three coaches and the dining and lounge cars.

Coach and sleeping car passengers mingled in the mid-train sightseer lounge car and the dining car. The riders we met came from all walks of life and all parts of the country. The first evening, at dinner, we met Tim and his young son, who were returning to Denver after visiting family in the east. In addition to the Zephyr, they’d ridden the Capitol Limited, the Cardinal, and the City of New Orleans. Tim wanted his son to see America and experience American history.

At breakfast the next morning, we met a young couple. He was from Hong Kong, via Oakland, and she was from Queens, N.Y. They wanted to see America – not from 35,000 feet or from an eight-lane interstate, but from the comfort and perspective of the train.

Many of those we spoke with chose the train as an alternative to the hassles of flying or the costs of driving. That’s a freedom of choice they’ll lose if the anti-Amtrak White House gets its way.

There were many families with children, like the foursome from Montana we met in the lounge car who were heading to San Francisco. Train travel is perfect for families: kids have more room than in a car or plane, and more to keep them busy. They can make new friends, sightsee or roam the train. Our enjoyable dinner companion of the second night, Nancy, explained that she didn’t have to worry about the safety of her niece while on board the train. She was traveling back to Sacramento after spending time with her sister.

Some choose the train to unwind and relax. The Amish are frequent riders: they take the train for religious reasons. A number of passengers were concerned – rightly – that this would be their last chance to enjoy a long distance train if Washington shuts Amtrak down.

At lunch on day three, just as we began the climb up to Truckee, Calif. in the spectacular Sierra Mountains, we met author Lynn Rogers and her traveling companion, Bob (sorry, we didn’t get his last name). She sees train travel not only as a way to address the transportation needs of a diverse population, but also as a way to bring that population together. We couldn’t agree more.

Regular riders complained of two main issues: delayed trains and surly service. Both are issues Amtrak is addressing. We didn’t encounter any bad service, but we can’t be surprised at negative attitudes from hard-working employees whose jobs are constantly being threatened by politicians in Washington who never ride the trains they condemn.

Excessive delays are common, especially on certain routes. It’s a problem for Amtrak as well as some commuter railroads which run on freight railroad tracks. We’ll tackle this problem here in more detail in a forthcoming series, but we experienced the frustration first-hand on train 5.

On the second night out from Chicago, we pulled into Salt Lake City at 10:22 p.m., 11 minutes ahead of schedule. But, by the time we woke up the next morning, we were two hours behind schedule. It got worse throughout the third and final day, as freight congestion held us up east of Sparks, Nev. and again through Donner Pass in Northern California. We arrived in Emeryville, Calif., the train’s final stop, about six and a half hours late.

That’s a problem to be fixed; not a reason to run Amtrak out of business. Here’s what we experienced in three days and 2,438 miles of train travel: a clean, quiet, smooth-riding sleeper car; excellent food; interesting people; amazing scenery; time to relax; and time to appreciate our country and its people.

Despite the misinformed criticism emanating from many in Washington, Amtrak has had more than a few success stories in its 34-year history, and the California Zephyr is one of them. Let’s keep it running.

Ride along with us: view a 10-minute video at Google Video here.

The Customer-Friendly Skies of JetBlue

Photo courtey JetBlue

Earlier this week, in an article about the latest trends in customer service ("Beyond Satisfaction," Oct. 30, 2006, page R4, subscription required) The Wall Street Journal quoted a JetBlue executive describing the company's policy as one of "anticipating the customer's needs." That's certainly true, and it's a lesson other airlines and transportation companies should learn.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from JetBlue advising me that an upcoming flight I'm booked on -- three weeks from now -- has had a minor schedule change, with a new departure time 15 minutes earlier than when I booked it. To be sure I got the message, a customer service representative called last night as well.

I frequently travel JetBlue from Southern California to Washington, D.C. and New York's JFK Airport, and to Oakland. The planes are clean, on time, and the crews have a positive attitude. I happened to ride in a hotel shuttle with a JetBlue crew to OAK recently, and the camaraderie was evident.  There's usually ample legroom, the seats are leather and every seat features a personal LCD monitor with access to 30-plus channels of DirecTV.

A recent business trip took me to four different cities in two weeks, logging over 6,100 air miles on Ted (United's low-cost subsidiary airline) and American Airlines. In contrast to JetBlue, American's planes -- mostly B-737's and MD-80's -- are old, noisy and cramped. The airline provides no snack at all in coach, except for an inedible box of cheese and crackers which they will sell to you for four dollars.

Ted was better: the Airbus A320's were new and comfortable, and the airline offers a $34 upgrade to seats with additional legroom toward the front of the cabin. It's well worth it.

For consistent, customer-focused air travel though, you can't beat JetBlue.

L.A. Metrolink Celebrates 100 Millionth Passenger

File photo by Daniel B. Zukowski

Fourteen years after inaugurating commuter rail service for Los Angeles, Metrolink celebrated its 100 millionth passenger today at a ceremony in Anaheim, Calif.

"Metrolink had not anticipated reaching 100 million riders until next year, but increased ridership throughout 2006 meant the milestone was reached sooner – during the morning commute on the 26th day of October,  to be precise. Ridership is up more than 8 percent in 2006 system wide," the rail agency said in a statement.

Avoidable Loss

The two most useless things to a pilot are the runway behind him and the sky above him. Cory Lidle and his flight instructor, Tyler Stanger, had plenty of sky above them when they flew into a New York City highrise on Wednesday, but too little sky below them or around them.

Lidle's single-engine aircraft was flying at an altitude of 700 feet  over the East River, according to USA Today, and appeared to have lost 200 feet of altitude in a tight left turn which ended in the fatal collision. The flight was a sightseeing jaunt around Manhattan that originated from New Jersey's Teterboro Airport.

I took my flight training many years ago at Republic Airport on Long Island. The airspace around New York was crowded then and is even more so now. My flight instructor warned against the dangers of low-altitude flightseeing, and never would have allowed me to take our Piper Cherokee around Manhattan in the conditions Lidle faced this week.

The ceiling was 1,700 feet at the time of the accident, with a visibility of seven miles. The conditions were legal VFR (visual flight rules), but prudence would indicate that there was no margin for error in the narrow confines of the East River, which is less than half a mile across at the point where Lidle or Stanger attempted to turn the plane. That the Cirrus SR-20 lost altitude in the turn indicates either a mechanical problem or -- more likely -- poor pilot technique. Such a tight turn would require a good dose of added power to maintain altitude. Only 14 seconds elapsed between the time the aircraft began its turn and the last radar contact, at which time it was just a quarter-mile from impact.

Most aviation accidents result from a series of missteps or misfortunes. The towers of the Queensboro Bridge, which Lidle's aircraft crossed about 20 seconds before beginning its fateful left turn, reach 350 feet into the sky. The cables of the Roosevelt Island Tramway reach 250 feet high.  Perhaps those obstacles distracted the pilot. The winds, according to the USA Today article, were from the east-northeast at seven miles per hour. That would have acted as a tailwind on the Cirrus and increased its airspeed just as it neared the completion of its planned 180-degree turn.

The National Transportation Safety Board will conduct a thorough investigation. Even if it determines mechanical factors to be responsible, it will also likely cite pilot error and misjudgment as additional causes in leading to the accident. It's understandable that the flight instructor, from Southern California, would want to take the opportunity to sightsee around Manhattan, but flying into congested airspace over an obstacle-filled landscape at low altitude in less-than-optimal weather conditions may have lead to a sad loss of life that was entirely avoidable.