In-the-Red Amtrak Has No Deficit of Devotees

If you follow the news these days, you’re hearing a lot about Amtrak. The government committee that oversees the passenger rail service says Amtrak has no chance of making a profit by 2003, the deadline Congress set five years ago to stop the federal subsidies that keep the system alive. Amtrak last year ran $1.1 billion in the red, the biggest deficit in its three-decade history.

In the congressional debate that has ensued, some have suggested that passenger rail is obsolete in the U.S. and that few would mourn its demise. Amtrak carries only one-half of 1% of all “passenger miles” on intercity routes, compared with 50% for auto and 48% for airlines. Even buses, with 1.5%, carry more people, according to the Bush administration’s proposed budget for 2003.

But for vacationers, the train is a bit more popular than those figures suggest. About 6% of U.S. leisure travelers took the train in the last year, according to a 2001 survey by YPB/Yankelovich Partners. I’m one of them. Rail travel is fun and ecologically sound (at least compared with autos), and it relieves me of driving. An America without trains would disappoint me and, I suspect, many of those 6%.

We rail travelers in the West have been largely absent from Washington’s debate over Amtrak. This is curious because the Pacific Surf- liner, which plies 347 miles along the California coast between San Diego and San Luis Obispo, is Amtrak’s second-busiest route, after the so-called Northeast Corridor, which serves Boston, New York and Washington, D.C.

Last year the Surfliner carried 1.7 million riders, 10% more than two years earlier. And although many think of such local routes as “commuter rail,” only 27% of the Surfliner’s passengers used it for commuting, business or school purposes. The rest were leisure travelers, according to Amtrak West, the division that oversees the operation.

The Surfliner’s growth is no fluke. In January, ridership increased 4.8%, but California’s two other local routes did even better: 6.8% on the San Joaquins, which run from Bakersfield to Oakland and Sacramento, and 21.7% on the Capitol Corridor, which runs between Auburn and San Jose via the Bay Area.

Amtrak officials are still sorting out the reasons for the increase, which could be a two-for-one fare sale, a continuation of the “Sept. 11 effect” that made some travelers choose trains over planes, or something more permanent.

On a day trip one Saturday in February with my partner, I was reminded of what keeps some people traveling by train--or avoiding it. We took the Surfliner north from Los Angeles and planned to hop the Coast Starlight, the long-distance train that runs 1,289 miles between Los Angeles and Seattle, for the return from Santa Barbara. We found plenty to love--and hate--on our trip.

On the negative side, let’s start with the fare: $34 per person round trip. Pretty expensive considering we could have driven the 180-mile round trip for about $12 (assuming $1.35 per gallon of gas and an average of 20 miles per gallon), or $6 per person for two. (Of course, this doesn’t figure in the additional cost of owning and maintaining a car.) We finessed the fare problem by taking advantage of the two-for-one sale that was to expire Feb. 28. There was no finessing the parking fee at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, though: $10 for the day.

Then there’s the time issue. The train takes about two hours, 40 minutes on a trip we could have made by car in an hour and a half.

Once aboard, we found the bathroom in our car out of order. For a few nervous minutes, the door between our car and the cafe car refused to open, trapping me in the cafe car until a crew member rescued me. As for the return trip, we never got on the southbound Coast Starlight. It was 10 hours late because of bad weather in Oregon, the agent at the Santa Barbara station said; passengers were being bused south from Emeryville, near San Francisco. The northbound train was tardy too, 13 hours and counting, having arrived late in Los Angeles because of the same weather. We caught a later Surfliner instead.

While our experience may have been extreme, Amtrak’s long-distance trains were on schedule only 56% of the time in 2000 (the most recent data posted on its Internet site), compared with the 77.4% on-time average posted by major U.S. airlines in 2001.

Still, the trip had positives: the relaxed pace, an amiable crew, comfortable seats with ample legroom and the opportunity for both of us to view the passing scenery (including some spectacular beaches in the last 45 minutes). The trains ran on time, typical for Amtrak’s short-distance trains, which were on schedule 81% of the time in 2000. And in Santa Barbara, it let us off at the foot of tourist central: State Street, near the beach.

We also had a chance to chat with fellow passengers like Camarillo residents Rick and Cheri Ramirez, who were taking their 21/2-year-old grandson, Jackson, to Santa Barbara for the day. Rick uses the train regularly to visit his wife at her job in San Luis Obispo. “Twenty bucks each way--cheaper than taking my truck,” he says, adding, “It’s so relaxing.”

Bernie Reynolds, a golf pro based in Houston who has another home in La Costa, was going to Simi Valley, clubs and all, to play golf with a friend. “I hate L.A. traffic,” he says. “This is so much easier.”

As for subsidizing Amtrak with tax dollars, Reynolds says, “If the federal government can spend billions to search for Bin Laden, it can keep Amtrak going.”

After all, as Amtrak supporters are fond of pointing out, more than $14 billion in federal funds is going to support air travel this year in the FAA budget, and more than $33 billion is earmarked to support car travel in the Federal Highway Administration budget. (Some contend that Amtrak shouldn’t be expected to make a profit because no national passenger rail system does, but that position is dubious. Japan’s three large passenger railways, for instance, are privately owned and “profitable by any reasonable definition,” says Lou Thompson, railways advisor to the World Bank. He allows, though, that “most public railways do operate at a loss.”)

I empathize with Robert L. Coffman, a self-confessed “train nut” from San Diego who wrote The Times a letter last month about his recent cross-country train trip. He braved “double-deck sleepers with no in-compartment lavatory or wash basin,” no working toilets or shower in his car from Albuquerque and other annoyances. But equipment east of Chicago was better, and “the service crews were tops,” he adds.

He concludes: “Everyone should see our wonderful country at ground level at least once. It is not just empty ground to fly over, stuffed in an aluminum tube.”

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Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane .engle@latimes.com.