t sounds like the dream of an Amtrak rider the night after a really bad trip home.Posted on 05/22/2002 11:24:11 AM PDT by ELS
t sounds like the dream of an Amtrak rider the night after a really bad trip home.
The rider paces the platform at Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, looking into cars, finding every seat full, the aisles packed with angry standees. Then at the end of the train, a vision: a car incredibly, miraculously, half empty! There are seats! Everyone inside looks almost happy! It is a suburban commuter's Shangri-La!
Like many sweet dreams, this one will end in frustration, however, just as it does in the waking world every weekday evening around 5:42, when an Amtrak Clocker train prepares to leave New York for Philadelphia.
A conductor near the car will raise his hand and politely say: "Sorry, sir. Can't ride in here. It's private." And just then, a passenger will stride confidently past into the roomy car, nodding at the conductor, who nods knowingly back.
This is because that passenger belongs to probably the most rarefied group of train riders in the Northeast, a private commuting club of about 75 stockbrokers, lawyers, writers and business owners who get not only a guaranteed seat every evening and morning but also often an empty one next to them, too, just for stretching out.
There is nothing particularly elegant about their club, no liveried bartenders or baccarat tables. The members simply pay Amtrak a premium, above their ticket price, to lease a plain old train car, one in the morning and one in the evening.
But in a commuting world around the New York region that has come to resemble the cattle industry, the club's members might as well be Pierponts and Morgans.
In the cars hooked to theirs, crowding has become so bad in the last several years — mostly because of the rapidly growing commuter population in New Jersey — that the trains feel more like rush-hour subways all the way from Princeton to New York and back again. On a recent evening, one weary man asked a conductor if he could ride in the bathroom, just to escape the crush. (The conductor said no.)
The private club — known as the 200 Club, for the number of a morning train that once ran into New York on the old Penn Central — is a relic from a more genteel era in mass transportation. The club — which has been around for more years than any living member can recall, easily more than a half century — started on the old Reading lines. And for most of its years, it drew little attention from other riders.
It was simply one among many club cars, some privately owned (known in railroad circles as "private varnish") and others, like the 200 Club, leased from the railroad by commuters who wanted a journey a cut above what a regular ticket buys.
But as the years went by, railroads died like dinosaurs. The Reading lines discontinued passenger service. The Penn Central became Conrail and later Amtrak. Finally, the 200 Club was left as the last private car in regular commuting service in the whole Amtrak system, its officials say.
And with the increase in ridership — especially since Sept. 11, as commuting patterns have shifted, packing trains even more — some over-elbowed regular riders have begun casting a more jaundiced eye toward the Club 200 car.
They question whether Amtrak, long in financial straits, loses money on the club's lease. They ask why a federally subsidized railroad should allow a private club in the first place. They ask why Amtrak does not open the club car to everyone.
Sometimes, they quietly ask the conductor at the door how to become a member. "They're mad about it," said one conductor, "but then they want to join."
When they find out the answers — that the club's full-time membership costs $1,200 a year above the ticket price, plus extras like a $100 initiation fee and that, sorry, the club is full right now, accepting no new members — they tend to start asking the angry questions again.
"Ninety-five percent of the time, people say `Thanks, but no thanks,' and I think it's just because they don't want to spend the money," said B. Grant Fraser, the club's president and the man who ends up with all the business cards passed along to the conductor.
Mr. Fraser, who joined the club in 1983 and whose father-in-law was also a member, stressed that there were no real qualifications for membership, other than solid dues-paying ability. There are no special handshakes or funny hats or oaths. And while the club has 75 full- and part-time members now, just about the most it can have and still ensure enough seats in the car, membership is not always passed along quietly down the generations like a rent-controlled apartment.
In fact, the club has sometimes posted fliers at stations, looking for joiners. "We're nonsectarian," Mr. Fraser said.
In its earlier years, the club was much more exclusive and clubby, like something out of a Chesterton novel. "There were porters who would serve coffee and drinks and guys would play cards," Mr. Fraser said. But after the formation of Amtrak, the federal government imposed regulations forbidding the railroad to provide amenities in private cars that were not available to regular passengers willing to pay for them, so the club lost its porter, Mr. Fraser said.
Now, he said, offering a glimpse into the greatly circumscribed vision of modern rail travel, "the purpose of the club is to simply have a seat."
The membership has changed, too. There are now many more professions represented, and the club is composed of about as many women as men. "We do have a fair number of married couples who sit together," Mr. Fraser said. "We even have one married couple who doesn't sit together."
Neither he nor Amtrak would say how much the club pays to lease the car, but Mr. Fraser said that about half its 75 members were full-time commuters, paying $1,200 a year. Part-time riders pay less. The annual amount to Amtrak could be as high as $70,000, for one car on the 7:59 morning Clocker from Princeton Junction and one car on the 5:42 out of Penn Station in the evening.
By contrast, Amtrak says that riders wanting to lease cars for special events could pay as much as $8,000 for one round trip between Philadelphia and New York, representing about what the railroad would get if the 80-seat car were full of full-fare paying passengers.
But Michael Bonner, the Amtrak official who oversees the Clocker service, said that — despite what overcrowded riders might think — the club was not taking away precious seats that should be available to everyone first come first served. On Clocker trains, most riders between New York and Princeton have New Jersey Transit monthly passes costing $274 a month. New Jersey Transit pays Amtrak to provide the service to supplement its own, under an agreement that specifies a certain number of cars per day. If the 200 Club did not exist, he said, the club's extra car would almost certainly not remain on the trains.
Mr. Bonner said that the club's lease was renegotiated in the 1990's, increasing the cost steeply, because Amtrak felt it was not getting enough money. He said he did not know if the railroad was now making or losing money on the arrangement, but that senior Amtrak officials seemed happy with the agreement, as did the club.
"When the Clocker trains leave here in the morning, we don't have a coach left in Philadelphia," Mr. Bonner said. "There's nothing I can do. I don't have any more equipment, and they just keep building like crazy out in Jersey."
So, for now, at least until the 200 Club has another opening, the passengers crowded elsewhere on the Clockers can only look longingly, or sullenly, through the tinted window into the spacious club car.
Martha Paskoff, an assistant at a research foundation, was one of those doing so recently, on a chilly evening. "There were seven or eight of us crammed into the vestibule in our car. And I was literally begging, not to ride in the private car, but just in front of it, in the vestibule there."
She added: "I thought I was above that, but I found out that I wasn't."
When Ms. Paskoff got off in Princeton, after an hour in the vestibule, she was shivering. A Club 200 member passed her on his way out. "He said, `Well that's a nice hat!' " Then he buttoned up his coat, remarked on how cold it was and wished her a good night.
This is true not only for Amtrak trains in the PA/NJ/NY area, but for NJ Transit trains as well. Whatever benefits there are to commuting into the city by train are countered by the increasingly uncomfortable riding conditions (not to mention the "cattle calls" at NY Penn Station, often only minutes before the trains are scheduled to depart).
In its earlier years, the club was much more exclusive and clubby, like something out of a Chesterton novel. "There were porters who would serve coffee and drinks and guys would play cards," Mr. Fraser said. But after the formation of Amtrak, the federal government imposed regulations forbidding the railroad to provide amenities in private cars that were not available to regular passengers willing to pay for them, so the club lost its porter, Mr. Fraser said.
Typical government "management" - stifle free market forces. If the club [private] car owners and the porter agree on the arrangement, there should be no problem.
Now, he said, offering a glimpse into the greatly circumscribed vision of modern rail travel, "the purpose of the club is to simply have a seat."
What a loss.
"When the Clocker trains leave here in the morning, we don't have a coach left in Philadelphia," Mr. Bonner said. "There's nothing I can do. I don't have any more equipment, and they just keep building like crazy out in Jersey."
Perhaps Amtrak should be looking at trends and trying to be more proactive instead of whining that they have too much demand for their services. And then working with the states to increase train trips, cars, and possibly lines/tracks.
The DL&W Railroad used to run a train in New Jersey that they called the "Millionaires' Express" -- it was paid for under similar circumstances, and made just a few stops in the wealthy enclaves of Morris and Somerset Counties before running directly to the rail terminal in Hoboken.
When NJ TRANSIT took over the rail service in 1983, passengers were no longer permitted to pay the agency for a special train like that. However, the agency went out of its way to keep that train in service anyway -- though for the sake of apprearances they started calling it the "Millington Express" (Millington being the last stop before it ran straight to Hoboken).
A few years ago, NJ TRANSIT ran into scheduling problems when they started running the Midtown Direct service to Penn Station, New York. They ended up changing the Millington Express to a local train. Someone I know who works for NJ TRANSIT got a call on the day they changed the schedule -- it was an angry (but calm) guy who was complaining about the schedule change.
"I'm sorry, sir," my friend said, "but there's just no way we could fit that express train into our schedule -- we've got a bunch of additional trains that we're now running to New York."
"I want to make sure that you understand something -- you will put that express train back in service, young man."
"Yeah, sure," my friend said, and hung up after saying goodbye.
The following Monday, he received a call from the governor's office in Trenton -- come hell or high water, they said, put that Millington Express back in service!
In the Other Direction, on the 4:15, home at 5:00.
If this were private enterprise you'd be right, but essentially, Amtrak (via our tax dollars) subsidizes the extra car bigtime. If these guys were being charged even half of the going rate that regular citizens are charged for private cars, the cost would be $1,000,000 per year ($13,333 per person) instead of $70,000 per year ($1200 per person).
To be fair, Penn Station is at, if not beyond capacity--and handles LIRR, NJ Transit and Amtrak--including Amtrak trains that used to be routed into Grand Central. Meanwhile, Grand Central, with ONLY commuter traffic, seems vastly UNDERutilized.
Yeah, my train trip's 60 miles now instead of 25, but I wouldn't give it up. The scenery along the Hudson line beats any other commuter route, that's for sure.
Seriously -- In answer to your question about Penn Station, you have to remember that the station is owned and operated by Amtrak, which means Amtrak gets priority in terms of schedule slots, platform space, etc.
Does that mean that Amtrak will get to use the LIRR tracks at Penn? What about the plan to expand Penn Station over to the area under the U.S. Post Office? Is that still in the works?
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