Mathews: Losing my children to California’s overcrowded trains
If any of the conventional wisdom about trains in California is true - that no one ever rides them, that Californians prefer to drive or fly and that high-speed rail or other train projects are “boondoggles” or “trains to nowhere”- then how do you explain the public humiliation of my wife?
Not long ago, my whole family - my beloved, myself and the Three Stooges (our boys, ages 9, 7 and 4) - were on Amtrak returning to Los Angeles from San Diego, when an announcement came over the train sound system.
“Mrs. Mathews, we have two of your children here in the café car,” said the crackling voice. “Mrs. Mathews, you should never let your children walk unaccompanied on an Amtrak train.”
Mrs. Mathews, sitting across from me, was unhappy at the scolding. And then, in a turn of reflexive scapegoating that has become all too common in our polarized nation, she looked for someone to blame.
That someone was me.
Her accusation - that this was my fault - was based on an overly limited reading of the facts. True, she hadn't been the one to let our two older children go to the café car; I had been in charge of them when they went in that direction.
But her theory of the case omitted the larger context that both absolves me and puts the lie to the idea that Californians are train-phobic.
The Pacific Surfliner that day was not merely crowded. It was mobbed: every single seat was taken, and people were standing in the aisles. Even the stairwells between the two levels of the double-deck cars were crammed with passengers.
So when I took those two hungry boys in the direction of the café car, which was two cars back from our seats, we only managed to go about 50 feet before the crowding got so thick I could no longer squeeze through. The boys are very skinny and begged to be allowed to go on by themselves. I asked them not to go, but they disappeared anyway into the scrum of humanity, beginning what would become a memorable adventure.
Our story may be singular, but the situation is not. Crammed Amtrak trains are commonplace in California. It turns out that many millions of my fellow Californians share a secret: they love to ride trains between our state's cities.
California is now home to three of the busiest intercity train lines outside the Northeast Corridor of the United States. The Pacific Surfliner service on which we were riding that fateful day, has 3 million riders annually on trains from San Luis Obispo down to San Diego; it's America second busiest passenger rail corridor.
Two others are in the top 10. The Capitol Corridor, running from San Jose to Sacramento's capital region, has more than 1.6 million annual riders (and recently added a new Fairfield-Vacaville station). And the San Joaquins - serving many of the Central Valley cities that, high-speed rail opponents claim, have no taste for rail - boasts more than 1.1 million annually. Ridership on these lines, which are subsidized by the state, is not only high, it's growing.
Amtrak has quietly become a vital part of life in the Golden State. In addition to those three train lines, it has four national lines that run through the state; operates Metrolink commuter rail service in Southern California; runs maintenance facilities in Oakland and L.A.; and bases one of its two major reservation centers in Riverside.
Today three stations - Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego - are among the 10 busiest train stations in the Amtrak system. All told, Amtrak has 70 inter-city trains (plus 100 commuter rail trains) operating daily in California. Altogether, they carry 12 million riders in California each year. That's roughly half the passengers that Southwest Airlines boards annually at California airports.
Amtrak officials would like to accommodate even more of us, but the amount of train service they can offer is limited in large part by a lack of infrastructure. Many stretches of California have only a single track - notably in southern Orange County - so two trains can't be moving in opposite directions at the same time. In addition, Amtrak often shares tracks with other train traffic - commuter rail or freight - limiting service.
“We cannot add service fast enough in California,” an Amtrak spokesman told me.
Things are jammed enough that Amtrak publishes guidance on its website on how to avoid crowding. Among the advice issued for the Pacific Surfliner: avoid riding on Fridays and Sundays, when trains are especially crowded. And try to travel midday, rather than on busier mornings and evenings. It also helps to choose one of the 500-series trains that have a more limited run rather than the more crowded 700-series trains that go all the way from San Luis Obispo to San Diego.
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