Towards Carfree: Aboard a Portland-bound trainSteve Jones reports from the Towards Carfree Cities conference.
Our crew includes (from left) Jon Winston, Nancy Bodkin, Jason Henderson, and Brian Smith.
“We’ve got a runner,” the train conductor said over the PA system as we pulled out of Eugene, Oregon for the final leg of our overnight train from Oakland to Portland. Someone seeking good coffee had missed the train and was fruitlessly trying to catch up to us.
I was with a large contingent of Bay Area transportation policy experts, activists and thinkers – all bound for the Towards Carfree Cities conference -- and we laughed. Then we laughed harder once we realized that Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State, was no longer with us. Shit, we chortled, Jason didn’t make the train.
Co-conductor Justin Clark, who is just 22 but has been working for Amtrak for two years, walked by the aisle so I asked him what happened. “He decided to go to the coffee stand a block and a half up the street. I saw him running with the coffee in his hand,” Clark told me. He radioed conductor Archie Club, “and he said it was too late.” Clark said he might have stopped the train if it was his call, but it wasn’t.
“We don’t do it for fun,” Clark, whose tongue was pierced, said of leaving passengers behind and watching them run for the train. In fact, Clark felt a little bad as he stood in the doorway, watching the passenger try to stop the train: “I had to look away. I didn’t want him to see that I saw him.”
The trip had been a smooth one so far, leaving the Bay Area only a few minutes late, a sharp contrast to Amtrak’s reputation for long delayed trains, something activist Brian Smith connected to our runner: “That’s Amtrak’s new commitment to on-time efficiency.”
Jason walked up part way through my interview, so our crew was intact after all, soon to arrive for a big week in Portland.
Amtrak Conductor Justin Clark
Our train group of more than a dozen was divided by class, or at least by the class of ticket we’d purchased. More than half of us bought the $87 coach ticket for this 16-hour trip, while the rest paid around $450 per couple for the sleeper cars, which include free food and access to a VIP lounge car.
As a result, half of us were relatively well-rested when we arrived in Portland yesterday afternoon, and the other half (including me) were weary from a long night trying to sleep in a squeaky old coach cabin car or the equally loud observation car. But the scenery of the verdant Cascades and mountain lakes was gorgeous, making the train a fun way to travel, particularly to a carfree conference.
Arriving at the train station in Portland, a beuatiful building packed with travelers looking at easy-to-decipher signage, was a marked contrast to leaving San Francisco by bus to the Emeryville train station, which had no posted train schedules and barely audible announcements.
It’s the little things this group notices, like how easy and inviting the carfree options seem to be. And Portland is known for being the best carfree city in the United States, which is why the conference is here. Light rail is frequent and free in the urban core here. I was able to easily rent a bicycle for the week and find my way around on well-marked routes – and to take my bike on board to the MAX line trains, something Muni doesn’t allow yet.
The conference began this morning with “depaving day,” the tearing up of an asphalt vacant lot to transform it into a community garden, something that my next post will be about.
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