Interconnectivity enables trains, buses & planes to do what each does best

This Friday, I will be departing for my first visit to Switzerland, a two-week tour of the country — primarily by train — that is a gift from my aunt for my 30th birthday. One of the things that has most intrigued me about Switzerland, aside from its spectacular alpine scenery and the wonderful variety of passenger train services that span the country, is how well its entire public transportation system works seamlessly as a whole. Standard-gauge trains connect with narrow-gauge trains and rack railways, and trains connect to a network of postal buses, funiculars and lake boats that go where the railroads can’t or won’t go. 

This unified network serves the entire spectrum of the public, offering different classes of service, but giving everyone swift, punctual transportation from any point in the country to any other point, as well as many points in neighboring countries, with hardly any route operating less than hourly. This is the kind of public service that I am ashamed that I cannot enjoy here in the world’s richest country. 

To name just one example: in order to get home to Washington, DC from a conference in Indianapolis on a day that Amtrak’s tri-weekly Cardinal does not depart from there eastbound (a Sunday), I am resorting to taking a “Hoosier Ride” bus from Indianapolis (where buses do share a station with Amtrak, albeit one in dire need of sprucing up) to South Bend, where the bus depot is near the airport, but more than a mile from the Amtrak station — a distance I will likely traverse by taxi. I will thence board the eastbound Capitol Limited. 

Making use of the ground transportation options currently available in America requires this kind of inconvenience, and only the few of us who enjoy the challenge (and happen to have a preference for trains) will attempt such connections.

I was thinking about all of this as I read a back-and-forth between two of my Facebook friends surrounding my photo of the waiting area at St. Louis’s Gateway Station, one of the increasing number that is shared between Amtrak and intercity bus operators. One argued that trains and buses (and airlines) each attract a different “ecosystem” of clientele, and thus it somehow enhances the train travel experience to separate train riders from bus riders. 

The other countered that intercity buses reach many destinations that trains do not and thus serve to extend the reach of the public ground transportation system, and that trains and buses also serve as feeders to airports. Given that so many trips involve connections between multiple modes of transportation, the less hassle a traveler has to go through to complete their trip, the more likely that passenger is to choose either the bus or the train over driving or over taking one or the other exclusively.

While I agree with both of these friends that trains offer a travel experience that is superior to buses in nearly every way, I disagree with the notion of erecting any real or artificial barrier between the two modes. In much of Europe and many other places in the world, each city or town’s central train station is its complete transportation hub, with intercity buses, local buses and rail transit, rental or shared bikes, taxis and shared cars all readily available. 

This connectivity is key to solving the “first and last mile problem,” making it easy to get from the train or transit stop to one’s final destination. The lack of that kind of connectivity in much of the US contributes to the impression of transit as inefficient and inconvenient, and thus to driving being the default means of getting around — disadvantaging those who cannot afford or chose not to own a car.

And while I can kind of see where the first friend is coming from, we should dispense with the notion that trains and intercity buses, and even airlines, serve very different types of travelers. If that is the case, it shouldn’t be. The vast majority of travelers are not wedded to a particular mode, and will choose whichever mode or combination thereof best fits within their budget — in terms of both time and money. Buses are known for being easy on the wallet, and thus the same negative stigma that many Americans attach to the impoverished is often attached to bus riders as a whole, particularly Greyhound riders. 

Perhaps a reason for any real or perceived segmentation of the traveling public by mode stems from the fact that federal and state policies have treated each mode in a separate stovepipe for decades. Buses, for example, benefit from roads that the government maintains using gas tax and general fund revenues. But conversely, many bus companies own their own terminals where they can’t share space in a multimodal hub — or they avoid this expense by using curbside pick-up/drop-off points with no amenities, but located so that passengers can use the amenities of a nearby train station, shopping mall or other facility. Amtrak, in most cases, uses stations that are owned by local governments, transit agencies or private owners and pays rent to the owner.

There is no reason not to take advantage of the opportunity to share station infrastructure between buses and trains, and even between different bus companies. And if train and bus hubs have a quick, convenient link to airports, all the better. This allows the modes to more directly compete with one another, which, given greater parity between the modes in terms of treatment by the government, would result in more affordable and higher-quality service on all of them. 

One key advantage that trains have is the ability to offer a wide variety of classes of service in the same vehicle — from luxury private bedrooms to the most Spartan 3-and-2 coach seating, along with dining, lounge and observation cars — and to run these mobility machines at high frequencies on reliable schedules, with one train serving multiple overlapping “corridors” (origin-destination pairs) with one continuous route. 

If our passenger train system were properly capitalized, trains would become more the default mode for short and medium-distance travel, while still connecting the country over long distances. But we would still need buses to extend the reach of the rail network, even if we enjoyed a denser web of train routes, and to provide more flexible service to a variety of points on and off the rail lines. And airlines would still serve longer-distance and overseas travel needs. 

If we in the US want to have the kind of travel service that citizens of a developed country in the 21st century should expect, we would do well to stop conceptually bifurcating the modes — and their clientele — and start thinking like passengers who want the act of getting there to be simple and convenient — and perhaps even enjoyable. Americans shouldn’t have to go overseas to experience that “humble civic satisfaction,” as one travel writer termed it, on a large scale.