My Baby Takes the Morning Train...

[BelgradeBobcat]

I'm sort of a public transportation nerd-I admit it. About 10 years ago I experienced Washington D.C.'s Metro subway system. I thought it was the coolest thing. Leaving the car parked way out in the boonies and riding the train to everywhere we wanted to go without having fight through traffic, find a parking space, pay an exorbitant fee for parking, etc.

In the past I've also experienced the light rail system in Denver and San Diego, and the bus system in Seattle.

I've become a big believer in public transportation-especially light rail, commuter rail, and subway systems (much better than busses). I know the systems are heavily subsidized and receive a lot of political opposition-and maybe rightly so-but every form of transporation is heavily subsidized-even car travel. To me public transportation and especially rail is the only way to make a big city downtown viable.

So on our trip to Denver this past weekend I made it a point to use Denver's light rail as much as I could. We got a motel in the southern suburbs, parked the car at a park-and-ride in Littleton a few miles from the motel, and took the train to downtown. While downtown we easily shuttled up and down the 16th street walking mall on the free busses that passed every couple of minutes. I had a ball. And so did many thousands of others as the trains were always busy and sometimes packed.

We also took advantage of the Buffride-a shuttle bus that took us from a park-and-ride on the outskirts of Boulder right to the front door of the stadium. It saved me having navigate in heavy traffic in a place I was unfamiliar-very good for my blood pressure.

For more info on Denver's terrific public transportation system go to http://www.rtd-denver.com. They're about to open a whole new corridor of light rail along I-25 with a dozen or so stations. It's going to be really nice. If you're going to a Broncos, Nugget, or Rockies game it's the way to go.

The Denver RTD system is everywhere down there. You can't go anywhere without seeing a bus or train in operation.

Bozeman/Belgrade is now just experimenting with a bus system. It has morfed from the MSU bus system to serve everybody. It was launched a couple of weeks ago to little fanfare and I doubt most people even know it exists. There a four routes, served by busses with limited frequency and rides are free at least for the first year. It will be interesting to see how it does in individualistic Bozeman where, lets face it, traffic isn't bad enough and gas isn't high enough yet to force many to seek alternatives. Their website is just getting going-check it out: http://www.streamlinebus.com/

So what's your opinion? Public transportation in Bozeman? Good idea or financial boondoggle? I hope it works-but they have a long ways to go.

[PapaG]

Portland has the best public rail system I can imagine. The buses extend off in many directions as well. That said, at a cost of almost $100 million/mile, I have to wonder if the money is well spent. This doesn't even include yearly maintenance costs.

[bozbobcat]

It seems like a good idea to have a bus in the Bozeman area and more people will use it as time goes on and the new buses arrive. A new route that would work well, I think, is a shuttle route between the airport and some of the hotels on North 19th and North 7th. I know someone who advocates a light rail system in Bozeman, but the cost seems to be extremely prohibitive and driving rails down 19th and Main St. would be quite awful for construction. In a way, it's too bad the old streetcar lines were removed in about 1948. Overall, the bus system seems quite nice.

And now I'm getting on a "sidetracked" soapbox. Public transportation, including light rail, seems to be a good idea and is matched generously in federal funding. However, long distance travel has become more than expensive. Forget about finding a cheap airline seat out of Montana. And the way the airlines seem to be running financially, I'm not confident in the state of airline travel. Why not provide an alternative? Why not Amtrak and long distance rail, which combines the experience of sightseeing and relaxing, albeit a bit slower, travel. And on which airline can you get a good meal and have lounge space and snacks? My bottom line is that I'd like to see more Amtrak trains running, including across southern Montana. There, I'm off of the soapbox.

[BelgradeBobcat]

I agree with everything you said. I think the new bus system is avoiding the airport right now because they're afraid of angering a lot of private bus and taxi companies that shuttle travelers back and forth. Hopefully something can be worked out because it makes sense for public transportation to serve the airport. Once again referring to Denver-they have skyride busses picking up and dropping off airport passengers all over the place.

It is too bad they tore up the trolley tracks in Bozeman-imagine if they had something like that today running up and down Main Street.

I wonder about air travel too. How many more planes can we put into the air? Major airports are so choked with traffic they can barely function. I see the bullet trains they have in Europe and Japan and think that's the way to go. I just wonder if this country is too big geographically? It would also take completely new infrastructure as existing freight tracks aren't designed for those kind of speeds. Unfortunately, I think Amtrack is more of an example of how not to run passenger rail-although I understand it's quite popular on the eastern sea board.

[catamaran]

I use it and for the most part it is good. The only downside I have found so far is their schedule is set for summer and really bogs down with the added MSU traffic in town

[BelgradeBobcat]

Why not Amtrak and long distance rail, which combines the experience of sightseeing and relaxing, albeit a bit slower, travel. And on which airline can you get a good meal and have lounge space and snacks? My bottom line is that I'd like to see more Amtrak trains running, including across southern Montana. There, I'm off of the soapbox.

Along those lines...ooh bad pun...It sure would have been nice to ride Amtrack to Denver instead of driving across Wyoming in the middle of the night this past weekend. A few years ago there were some efforts to get Amtrack reestablished through this area, but I don't think it got anywhere. It's probably more likely that Amtrack will be eliminated all together in the west.

[bozbobcat]

I remember the efforts to get Amtrak back on a Spokane-Denver route, which in my mind made much sense. Several groups gave money to that cause. The major conflicts that I remember were route choices, for example does the train take a side detour to Billings from Laurel, where the line goes south to Denver, and would the train make an extension to Miles City, and also would Helena or Butte be the stop, keeping in mind the prohibitive cost of restoring the now-unused tracks east of Butte. Butte-Silver Bow County gave money to the Montana Rail Passengers Association, or whatever the group was called.

I'll agree that Amtrak has not been the prime example of how to run a passenger system. Before Amtrak, the services were handled by each individual railroad. Each railroad's philosophy impacted the service: they took the money losses as a good means of public relations, or they discontinued the services. While some railroads, such as the Santa Fe, the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern (the two primary passenger carriers in Montana after 1961) took great pride in their trains, others, such as the Southern Pacific, whose routes are now the southwestern corner of the Amtrak system, did not. Based on that argument, I wouldn't flat out say that re-privatization would work. The best hope for long-distance passenger trains in the United States may be to adopt a cruise-line kind of philosophy.

I know that was longwinded. If you'd like to read more about two of the more exceptional trains and the ones with Montana connections, I would recommend William Kuebler's Vista Dome North Coast Limited and Bill Yenne's Great Northern's Empire Builder. Or if you'd like to know more, I could write a book about this very subject.

And I'll concede that the pun in my first post was really bad.