Thursday, April 9, 2009
I thoroughly enjoyed Ms. Foster’s column advocating travel by rail. I personally have taken Amtrak between Lawrence and my home in Colorado several times. The column omitted one minor detail that may impact Amtrak’s “convenience” for KU students: the schedule.
For students traveling east to Chicago, Amtrak’s Southwest Chief departs at 5:49 a.m. (or, only a couple of hours after last call, if you want to hang out at the station with the rest of the drunks). But if you’re going west (as I suspect most KU students are) you’ll need to be at the station literally in the middle of the night and won’t pass Hutchinson until 4 a.m. The coach chairs don’t recline very far, and it’s a little uncomfortable trying to get some rest.
Kansas would be much better served by a high-speed rail route running along the I-70 corridor, linking Kansas City with the college towns of Lawrence, Manhattan and Hays, with stops in Topeka, Salina and Goodland on a daylight run to Denver. That probably won’t happen until roughly 20 years after gas reaches $10 per gallon.
Until then, we’re stuck, which is probably why no one (including me) rides the train anymore. I can fly to Denver for about $20 more and be home in less than half the time. I would like to travel more often by train and enjoy the scenery, but until the country decides to invest more than the paltry eight billion the president recently allocated for high-speed rail corridors (none of which serve Kansas) we’re going to fall even further behind the European system and remain tied to our cars or in the crowded skies.
— — Chris Rein is a graduate student from Monument, Colo.
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Comments
Letter: Train travel won’t work until routes improve
Kansas, is supposed to be part of the eventual high-speed rail plans, just not the initial phase. I don't think it stretched to Denver from what I remember of the map published in the Times. I think it stopped in Topeka.
Letter: Train travel won’t work until routes improve
Well said. I think when the high emotion arguments about the enviornment come out, its easy to forget the one truely finite resource we have is our time on this earth. I know for me, getting to my destination 4 or 5 hours faster means a lot more to me than 20 bucks. Glad to know I'm not the only one.
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