Amtrak's popularity rises as punctuality slides BANGOR, Mich. -- The 5-year-old girl leaned against the Amtrak train window with a cell phone against her ear and Grandma by her side.
"Hi, Mama. We're on the train. In a little while, it's going to be moving. ... We're moving, Mama. It's making big choo-choo noises."
Then, the three silver cars pulled away from the Grand Rapids rail station.
Rebecca Lynn Townsend and her grandmother are among the growing number of people riding Amtrak.
State transportation officials say the high price of gasoline is the likely reason Amtrak is on track to break ridership records in Michigan and nationwide. Those records were set just last year.
For the first time, more than 100,000 people rode the Grand Rapids-Chicago route last year -- a 75 percent jump from 2001, according to state Department of Transportation records.
However, as more passengers have climbed aboard, Amtrak has struggled to reach the station on time.
The three Michigan routes -- including the Pere Marquette between Grand Rapids and Chicago -- combined to rank second-worst in on-time performance among Amtrak's 15 "short-distance" routes across the country, according to Amtrak records.
This year, through March, the trains were on-schedule one-third of the time, down considerably from last year, records show.
The Pere Marquette was even below that average. Fewer than one in four have arrived on time this year, Amtrak officials said. The Pere Marquette is considered on-time if it's no more than 10 minutes late. About a third of the trains arrive more than 40 minutes late.
On Tuesday, the Grand Rapids Amtrak station was packed as the train pulled up for boarding just before 7:30 a.m. -- right on time.
Ryan Johnson, 18, of Rockford, was headed to Chicago for business -- a day-long internship at Northwestern University. Ethel Gardner was returning to Rockford, Ill., after visiting relatives for her 83rd birthday. Taoufik Bahadi, 41, of Tampa, Fla., was Chicago-bound to visit a friend.
They were among 150 people on the train this day.
State Department of Transportation spokeswoman Janet Foran said she wasn't surprised by the jump in ridership.
"The No. 1 reason as we see it is that high fuel prices are driving people to look at alternative transportation," she said. Trains are comfortable, she said, and easier than flying.
A round-trip ticket from Grand Rapids to Chicago costs $54. In a car that gets 22 mpg and with gasoline at $3.50 a gallon, the same trip would cost $56 in fuel alone. Then, there's the tolls and the parking.
This was Rebecca Townsend's first train trip. The 5-year-old girl's grandmother was taking her to Chicago to buy a doll at the American Girl store, then to lunch.
"It's relaxing," said her grandmother, Marie Adamski, of Manistee. "You don't have to fight traffic."
"And we don't even wear a seat belt," Rebecca said.
Erin Jeffrey, 30, of Grand Rapids, said she could have borrowed her mother's car for the trip. She planned to spend several days visiting a friend in Chicago.
"I'm not going to pay almost $4 a gallon when I could take the train," she said. "And it's more comfortable than flying. Flying is such a hassle. You have to pack your bags a certain way, go through security, get there two hours early."
Jeffrey prepared for a delay. She packed a book. Several months ago, her Amtrak trip to Albany, N.Y., was delayed 9 hours, she said. Her trip on the Pere Marquette to Chicago last summer was delayed an hour.
The state, which is paying Amtrak $6.2 million this year to operate in Michigan, keeps track of on-time performance.
"We have issues in Michigan that clearly affect on-time travel," MDOT's Foran said.
Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said most of the delays are out of the rail line's control. Amtrak owns none of the Pere Marquette tracks in Michigan and only part of the tracks on the state's other two routes. It is forced to share the rails with much longer freight trains.
Freight congestion has grown "severe" between the Michigan-Indiana border and Chicago, he said.
"We go onto the side tracks, and they go by," Magliari said.
In some cases, "host" railroads have fallen behind in track maintenance, forcing Amtrak trains to run at slower speeds, he said.
Winter weather also can freeze switches and cause rail problems, Foran said. "We expect those numbers to improve during better weather months."
However, Amtrak records show the Michigan lines were on time just 20 percent of the time in August 2006 and less than 33 percent in June and July.
Tuesday, the train left Grand Rapids at 7:35 a.m. -- on schedule. It pulled into Holland about 8:20 a.m., a minute or so behind, where several dozen people boarded within two minutes.
And, just about on time, it left Bangor, in VanBuren County, at 9:03 a.m. "It's been a while since we got to Bangor on time," conductor Greg Jeffries said to his assistant, David Jones.
"Today's a good day."
From there, it was on to Chicago -- 10 minutes late.
(The preceding article by Ken Kolker was published May 20, 2007, by The Grand Rapids Press.)
June 1, 2007
