1. There is no magic-pleasant mode of transportation. Until they invent the Transporter Beam, all modes of transportation involve a degree of pain in getting there and back. And Dr. McCoy found some unpleasantness in the Transporter.
2. All modes of transportation have their failure modes. The reliability of the rail mode was a major talking point of Anthony Haswell's NARP, but times have changed with respect to labor costs and labor allocation to keep trains running hitch free in bad weather.
3. I am sorry to hear about your mechanical failure and the repair expense. My parents drove what was then a 2-year-old minivan to Nova Scotia where it suffered a complete transmission breakdown, but in hindsight, that was not a particularly reliable make of car. By and large, automobiles are more reliable and lasting longer and needing fewer major repairs over their lifetimes.
4. The personal space afforded by a passenger train is perhaps from the passenger train, historically and under Amtrak, not suffering from marketplace forces that have shrunk airline seats -- a charter motorcoach driver waiting for a sports team at the U offered me to sit down after I was looking over his bus and I explained I was interested as an engineer in "transportation issues and policy." The seat was remarkably comfortable compared to what airlines offer these days, especially on Regional Jets.
5. Taking trips without the automobile still leaves you counting on rides at the other end. Or renting a car.
6. For all its faults, the family SUV offers you flexibility in departure times and when and where you stop for breaks and meals. It also allows you to pack more "stuff."
7. Outside of the NEC, passenger trains are certainly no faster than you report, and then you have to allow the extra time to "catch the train" as well as the uncertainty of Amtrak timekeeping.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Leaving at 8 am was certainly not the first choice with the children as they are cramped in the car the entire day and tend to get fussy. So in that regards, no I was not able to choose my departure time, that is the only time that worked for this length of trip and not pass through additional delaying meal periods. The other option that I have heard some of my friends take is to drive through the night, literally, give the children a bath and hit the road. I don't know if that is wise with the possibility of breaking down at 3 am. All that being said, 12 1/2 hours was our best time recently, some trips have taken 14 hours, even with no breakdowns. Yes, an auto-train would be great, and it could be offered side by side.
My main point is there is no progress in the current arrangement for mid-distance trips (300-800 miles). Running the same model SUV costs $0.78/mile per Edmunds True Cost to Own over 5 years at 15k annual mileage. In a previous era the trip could have been made in 14 hours, by a relatively slow overnight streamliner, but 8 hours of those would have been spent sleeping, 2 hours eating, and (2) 2 hours blocks of relatively enjoyable awake time. All you need is a station where you are not hasseled to park and transfer.
Converting this to an effective average speed is made by saying 600 miles/ 6 awake hours = 100 mph average speed by overnight rail, versus 48 mph on the interstate. That effective speed is at the same financial cost, both to me and society (the interstates are leveraged off fuel taxes on property-tax supported roadways), with much greater safety and personal comfort.
If you recall the Pullman bedroom suite (shown above) has/had a dividing wall that could also be configured with just a communicating door, so the children could go to bed early. The abondonment of this type of bedroom accomodation has surely hurt the marketability of Amtrak services on the national network.
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