Amtrak Travel

I was glad to learn that improvements are planned for the trains running between San Luis Obispo and San Diego (Jan. 16). Perhaps with faster engines it won’t take so long to travel this route.

The problem with attracting new train passengers on the coastal route is that the trains are simply too slow. To travel on the Coast Starlight from Los Angeles to San Francisco (which entails riding a bus from Oakland into the city) takes 12 1/2 hours, in other words, all day. We wanted to make the round trip from Santa Barbara to Reno entirely by train but found that in each direction this would necessitate an overnight stay in the Bay Area. We could travel via Sacramento, but then two-thirds of the travel would be on an Amtrak bus, and the return journey requires you to get on the bus in in Reno at 3:50 in the morning. Such considerations do not encourage a person to travel via Amtrak.

SUSAN SHIELDS

Santa Barbara