We stood on the concrete platform on one of those bone-cold,
freezing-fog mornings, up waaay too early for a Sunday morning. Still,
we couldn’t help feeling just a little excited as the whistle
blew through the chill, and the headlights announced the arrival of the
California Zephyr, churning into Reno from Chicago.
All these years, I’ve been wishing we could better commute by
train in these parts, but have never actually taken the train from Reno
myself. For many years, the notorious unpredictability of the
Zephyr’s schedule—which could be up to five or more hours
late—kept me back. Lately, it’s more reliable, though it
still takes so much longer to get anywhere by train than by driving
that convenience still wins out. But with the kids on winter break, and
a need to get to California “sometime” in the week before
Christmas, we didn’t have the normal time constraints. Finally, a
trip by train made sense.
I have family in the Nevada City area, so we booked our tickets to
Colfax. The stretch from Reno to Colfax is one of the most scenic of
all the Amtrak lines. As scenic as the Sierra is from Interstate 80,
the view is even more spectacular from the observation deck of the
train, where we could choose between tables and swiveling lounge
chairs, and we could sip coffee and play cards while the snow-covered
peaks slipped by. I felt like a little kid, seeing familiar sights for
the first time.
The contrasts between train travel and driving or flying are
countless. Train travel is so much more relaxing than the other two.
There is none of the hassle with security checks, weather, system
failures, or the claustrophobia of the flight—none of the
irritation of other drivers, having to stop for gas or to pee, kids
getting car sick or bickering in the backseat. I always feel a little
exhausted after driving several hours on 80—but that Sunday I
stepped off the train feeling wonderful.
However, the train is slow, inconvenient (there is only one
passenger route through Reno each way daily), and expensive. It cost us
$150 one-way for two kids and two adults to get to Colfax. That’s
at least 10 times what it costs to drive the same distance, and it
takes twice as long.
But these cost and time differentials are largely a function of tax
subsidies that disproportionately support automobile and air traffic
rather than trains. When we compare travel costs, we don’t
consider the cost of road maintenance or rebuilding—especially in
the case of 80, our main arterial, which requires resurfacing about
once a decade. We don’t count the multiple subsidies for oil
extraction, transportation, and refining that gets the gas into our
car, and all the other parts that get us from Reno to Colfax in 90
minutes. And we never incorporate the environmental costs into our
bottom line.
Transportation studies around the country estimate that rail
transportation provides a two to two-and-a-half times more efficient
return on the taxpayer dollar, even for the weak subsides that
currently exist, and it’s significantly less polluting than auto
or air travel.
Once upon a time, trains were the way to travel. It took more than
just the romantic “lure of the open road” to change
people’s minds—everywhere beyond the Atlantic corridor,
Amtrak in the 1970s slashed service and raised rates to help push us
into auto-dependency. These were political and economic
“solutions” to shift the transportation market. If Nevada
wants to be the vanguard of the green economy, we should muster the
imagination and political will to bring back the commuter train as a
viable alternative to the I-80 parking lot.