Brattleboro Reformer

All Aboard a Greener Travel Option

By Caroline Abels
Op-ed page, Dec. 22, 2006 


          It's a good thing you can see Mt. Wantastiquet from the platform of the Brattleboro train station. The mountain exudes patience, as all mountains do, and sometimes you need to emulate that patience as you stand on the platform with your luggage, waiting for that horn to blare in the distance.
          "Train's late," the man behind the desk at the train station will sometimes say as he leans back in his chair, waiting for the same thing you are.
          Eventually, Amtrak's Vermonter will arrive -- and to be fair, it's often on time -- and you'll climb aboard, thanking Wantastiquet for teaching you a thing about patience. You'll start admiring the views from your seat and will appreciate the absence of traffic jams and airport lines as you rock back and forth to your destination. 
          But there's another reason why it's good to have the station across from the mountain. As you wait there, you can peer up at Wantastiquet's trees, which are most striking in the fall, and remember that trains can help us reduce our carbon dioxide emissions and thereby help us ensure that Wantastiquet's western slope will continue to shine brilliantly each autumn. (A local ecologist has said that global warming is expected to make Vermont's fall foliage alarmingly drab in the coming years.)
          Improving Amtrak -- fighting for adequate funding so it can reach its full potential -- is clearly an environmental issue. It's rare, though, to hear Amtrak mentioned in conversations about alternative energy. Perhaps this is because people think it's a Titanic -- too massive to be turned around. Or because there's more money to be made in the concoction of fancy new hybrids and new kinds of fuel. Or because train travel is "so 1800s." Can you imagine Leonardo DiCaprio taking Amtrak to the Oscars instead of a hybrid Prius?
          But as some wise person said, when you're standing at the edge of an abyss, progress often means taking a step back.
          "It's unfortunate that so many environmental groups are focused on cars, considering that a growth in miles driven could reduce any fuel efficiency gains," said Colin Peppard, transportation policy coordinator at Friends of the Earth, when I asked him about the place of Amtrak in campaigns against global warming. Train travel, he said, "is another side of the coin that people aren't really looking at."
          Despite the fact that Amtrak transported 25 million passengers in 2004, and that federal subsidies to the rail line totaled only $1.4 billion this year (the cost of six days of war in Iraq), the Bush administration has been attempting to slash funding to Amtrak, saying the company needs to become profitable on its own or else shut down. (Will they say the same thing to the airline and highway industries, which also receive billions from our government?)
          It's important to remember that our elected officials -- both federal and state -- have the power to improve Amtrak. We do, too, by riding it. But it's challenging to do the right thing when the right thing costs more and takes longer than a car or airplane ride. And train schedules are often inconvenient. The Vermonter, for example, only comes through Brattleboro once a day in each direction.
          And so we're caught in another Catch-22: people won't ride Amtrak trains until they improve, but they won't improve until people ride them, see their potential, and pressure their state and federal officials to fund the quasi-governmental system adequately.
          I adore taking the Vermonter from Brattleboro to Manhattan, and am willing to spend a bit more for the perks. I can walk to the station here and be delivered right to Penn Station six hours later -- no check-ins, baggage claims or taxi stands get in the way. And I can avoid driving down the Cross Bronx Expressway. No mountain could inspire me to be patient on the Cross Bronx Expressway. 
          You may have your own reasons for liking the train, or disliking it. The fact is, it will do our climate no good if just a smattering of people take the train for their own quirky reasons. Mass transportation will soon require a mass movement of committed, passionate individuals if it's ever to become a safeguard of the climate we've all become accustomed to.

          For more information on Amtrak, go to www.narprail.org.