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walkitoutFirst off, I’ve now read a ton of threads and the _expectation_ is that you go from the train station to the airport by cab if you want to rent a car, and you prefer Hertz because they will reimburse the cab fare (no idea if this is still true, but it really does seem to have been the case in the past at least) and Amtrak’s affiliated credit card has some Hertz related benefits as well.
Second, I noticed a zipcar at the Worcester train station on google maps. And then I noticed zipcars at some other train stations. Circa 2010, this existed and was an expanding program and may _still_ exist? This is _super_ unclear, but it may revive or may fall over and die in the future. It is essentially the organized, app version of the pick up the cars after hours solution to the problem — instead of hiding the key under the gas flap or whatever, you use your app.
I was pretty incensed by the idea that you should have to go into Back Back station in order to rent a car, however, apparently that car rental operation (Avis) is _in_ the garage next to the station. This is actually very close to both the Union Station DC solution, the general Brightline solution, the Schiphol solution, etc. Altho Schiphol actually has train stations, rental cars and airport all kinda stacked, which is ludicrously convenient and I love it so much altho it can be painful when crowded and even with the moving walkways it is a ways on foot with luggage to go from your gate to your car — and there are also pickup in the arrival/departure car lane services as well which work great, which is roughly comparable to Kyte, I believe, altho I never did actually use Kyte, I signed up and went through the process when I was planning a trip to DC Union Station that would arrive after the in garage rental car operation was closed.
I truly have run up against this problem multiple times, and so has everyone else, for decades.
None of this is helpful for those many Amtrak stations that are platforms in the middle of “nowhere”, whether that means “suburbs” or rural, but far from an airport and no rental car options and often these stations are served only once a day in the middle of the night. I understand that is reflective of decades of deregulated air travel in which everyone who could possibly fly did fly, leaving only the poor, the Amish, the railfans and similar on the long-distance trains. The ICCT article a few posts back confirms that other people are thinking about this from a climate perspective — which is what really got me going here — but it’s not clear from the ICCT article whether anyone at the policy level has figured out just how important it is to solve the rental car conundrum. There is an admirable degree of effort devoted to intermodal planes / trains, trains / trains, trains / bus. But the rental car gap is extensive and weird and clearly deterring people with resources (time and money) from taking the train. So today’s project is: find policy papers about train intermodal and look for references to rental cars.
Oh, and the Back Bay Station Avis closes hours before the Lake Shore Limited arrives. So.
I’m kind of tickled to have figured this out. First of all, this looks like one of the most straightforward to solve of all the intermodal issues, once you have wifi/cellular data at all train stations. Second, it’s a network problem! Absolutely the thing I love best about trains is the network problems. This is 100% my jam.
ETA: R. just compared Amtrak to the cheese shop sketch in Monty Python. He’s not wrong.
I am still _struck_ by how I’d worked out what needed to change to make long distance trains work for more people and come up with three items: sleeping accommodations, schedule and wifi. But no. No, the biggest fucking problem is lack of access to rental cars.
ETAYA:
https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html
I had been wondering if Amtrak even knows where all of its trains were in real time and if they were willing to share that and YES, yes, they do know and they do share and so that makes it possible to set up some kind of “will probably arrive in n minutes so get up now and go over to the station to do the thing to help people along to their next destination” alert.
Second, I noticed a zipcar at the Worcester train station on google maps. And then I noticed zipcars at some other train stations. Circa 2010, this existed and was an expanding program and may _still_ exist? This is _super_ unclear, but it may revive or may fall over and die in the future. It is essentially the organized, app version of the pick up the cars after hours solution to the problem — instead of hiding the key under the gas flap or whatever, you use your app.
I was pretty incensed by the idea that you should have to go into Back Back station in order to rent a car, however, apparently that car rental operation (Avis) is _in_ the garage next to the station. This is actually very close to both the Union Station DC solution, the general Brightline solution, the Schiphol solution, etc. Altho Schiphol actually has train stations, rental cars and airport all kinda stacked, which is ludicrously convenient and I love it so much altho it can be painful when crowded and even with the moving walkways it is a ways on foot with luggage to go from your gate to your car — and there are also pickup in the arrival/departure car lane services as well which work great, which is roughly comparable to Kyte, I believe, altho I never did actually use Kyte, I signed up and went through the process when I was planning a trip to DC Union Station that would arrive after the in garage rental car operation was closed.
I truly have run up against this problem multiple times, and so has everyone else, for decades.
None of this is helpful for those many Amtrak stations that are platforms in the middle of “nowhere”, whether that means “suburbs” or rural, but far from an airport and no rental car options and often these stations are served only once a day in the middle of the night. I understand that is reflective of decades of deregulated air travel in which everyone who could possibly fly did fly, leaving only the poor, the Amish, the railfans and similar on the long-distance trains. The ICCT article a few posts back confirms that other people are thinking about this from a climate perspective — which is what really got me going here — but it’s not clear from the ICCT article whether anyone at the policy level has figured out just how important it is to solve the rental car conundrum. There is an admirable degree of effort devoted to intermodal planes / trains, trains / trains, trains / bus. But the rental car gap is extensive and weird and clearly deterring people with resources (time and money) from taking the train. So today’s project is: find policy papers about train intermodal and look for references to rental cars.
Oh, and the Back Bay Station Avis closes hours before the Lake Shore Limited arrives. So.
I’m kind of tickled to have figured this out. First of all, this looks like one of the most straightforward to solve of all the intermodal issues, once you have wifi/cellular data at all train stations. Second, it’s a network problem! Absolutely the thing I love best about trains is the network problems. This is 100% my jam.
ETA: R. just compared Amtrak to the cheese shop sketch in Monty Python. He’s not wrong.
I am still _struck_ by how I’d worked out what needed to change to make long distance trains work for more people and come up with three items: sleeping accommodations, schedule and wifi. But no. No, the biggest fucking problem is lack of access to rental cars.
ETAYA:
https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html
I had been wondering if Amtrak even knows where all of its trains were in real time and if they were willing to share that and YES, yes, they do know and they do share and so that makes it possible to set up some kind of “will probably arrive in n minutes so get up now and go over to the station to do the thing to help people along to their next destination” alert.