I'd like to tell a brief story from this past weekend that highlights some of the problems with mainstream applicability and environmentally responsible behavior. For the point of full disclosure, I'm a college student attending a state university in New York and I fully believe that environmentally responsible and healthy choices should be cheaper than the unsustainable alternatives. Now please, if you will, follow me over the fold for my story and my bone to pick with Amtrak.
I spent this past weekend in Washington, D.C. I went down to the beltway with my girlfriend to hang out with a friend spending the summer there. We stayed at his place and our goal was to keep costs as low as possible. I'm interning in New York City and she's taking summer courses so cost is a definite factor and we wanted to spend as little as possible.
The dilemma we ran into in planning this trip became clear from the beginning. Neither of us was that psyched to drive from New York to D.C. It's a 4-5 hour drive without traffic from Manhattan and only a 3 hour train ride. You're almost guaranteed to hit traffic going through the New Jersey turnpike and the train is rather relaxing (and provides the opportunity for a welcome nap after a day of work/class).
The plan was to leave New York between 3-4 on Friday afternoon and come back Sunday afternoon/evening. We wanted to maximize the amount of time we'd spend in D.C. while minimizing costs and commuting time. Ideally, our best options on time would be to take the train at 5 from New York (to arrive at 8 in D.C) and to catch a similarly timed train on Sunday afternoon as well.
Herein lies the dilemma, as you could have assumed from the title of this entry. The cost of Amtrak is rather excessive from New York to D.C., at least during the summer time (I can only speak from my experience so I won't pretend to know year-long pricing information). A train leaving New York to D.C. between 4:30-5:30 (several options) is priced at 111 dollars per person per trip. If you expand your time radius, then a departure at 7:30 costs 90 dollars per person per trip. That adds up to 180 individually round trip at a less than optimal time.
Let's say that cost is the most important feature and you want the cheapest ticket possible. For only 67 dollars per person per trip, you can leave at such commercially accessible times as 4:40-6:40 am or 10-12 pm. When you factor in the issues of taking mass transportation to and from the main terminals, these options are extremely limited at best and completely infeasible at worst. Not to mention, at 67 dollars the round trip train cost still weighs in at 134 dollars per person.
Now to the cost of driving. When you travel from New York to D.C., you spend most of the trip going through New Jersey. NJ has a heavily regulated gas industry and so prices are generally cheaper than national average. At a cost of 2.77 per gallon, and assuming that you fill up twice on your trip (once on the way down and once on the way back), two fillups run you between 40-50 dollars for one car transporting two people. Even adding tolls in, a split of driving costs between two doesn't run you more than 70 dollars.
Here's my overall point. Environmentally responsible and sustainable actions should be consumer friendly. It's not realistic to think that most people in America can act in such a manner because even if they want to, they still look at the bottom line. We know from so many instances that too many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. When they have to go out and spend money, they do so in the most cost effective and efficient manner possible. Even someone as aware of the issues as I still made the choice to drive instead of taking the public transportation option because cost reasons won out in the end.
We need to make environmentally responsible actions cost effective, folks. It's that simple.