Railroad travel has been out of style in the United States for quite some time now, but as oil prices top $80/barrel and continue to climb, I think rail travel is going to make a big comeback. Driving is simply going to get more and more expensive, and the price of maintaining our massive highway infrastructure will certainly far exceed the $150 billion per year we currently spend. Railroads provide a way to make travel drastically more efficient because several hundred people in a couple railroad cars is about the best carpool I can think of! Beyond the simple economics, taking trains is more environmentally responsible AND relaxing! Let me tell you about my train ride yesterday:

After visiting my girlfriend in Sacramento over the weekend, I decided to take the California Zephyr to get back home to Tahoe. I had previously used Greyhound and Amtrak’s bus service to complete the trip, but I decided to check out the actual train. I bought a ticket online the night before, and showed up at the station five minutes before departure and was soon rolling through a bunch of places I had never seen. Bottom line: travel by rail is dead simple.

It would have been quicker to take a car, but the little bit of extra time on train was well spent reading and noting the beautiful surroundings. Every time I travel long distances in a car, I arrive at my destination stressed out and feeling like I just risked my life for several hours. Riding on an Amtrak train is about as mellow as you can get and I arrived at the station in Truckee feeling good.

A cool side note is that on this route there are historians from the California State Railroad Museum who tell passengers interesting facts about the route. For instance, I learned that back in the late 1800s when devastating hydraulic mining was used to wash away entire hillsides for gold, the railroad had to hire special police to protect the rail lines because the miners were so greedy that they would try to wash away the very ground the tracks were on! Luckily hydraulic mining was banned in 1884, but the scars were still readily evident everywhere I looked.

As an environmentalist, it definitely felt good to take a train. According to The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, rail travel is better than driving. Period.