Amtrak expands; Amtrak and Greyhound bring students on board

            At 1:15 in the afternoon on Sep. 17, Jenny Erice waited patiently and alone inside the Lawrence Stop 2 Shop filling station on West Sixth Street.  From there, she would catch the 1:35 p.m. southwest-bound Greyhound, a $40 ride that would carry her to Topeka, then Emporia and eventually Wichita, where her family lives.  Erice sold her car when she turned 19 so she could travel more, and a year and a half of rising gas costs later, she has never once looked back, not to cars anyway. 

            Erice focuses instead on the future of regional transportation, but she and other travelers are finding that future mass regional transportation may actually be a return to the past and to an older, different kind of car.

            "My new thing is if I'm going to go a long way, I'm going to take Amtrak," Erice said.  

            Erice is not alone in preferring Amtrak.  Last year, a record 25.8 million passengers took the train service, according to the 2007 Amtrak Annual Report.  Amtrak is set to top that record this year but, as a federal and partially state-funded program, it needs more equipment first, said Marc Magliari, an Amtrak media relations representative.

            "Ridership is up this year about 11 percent." Magliari said.  "We're unable to keep up with demand with our current fleet."

            The rise in ridership Amtrak has seen over the past two years has not been shared by other means of mass regional transportation, though.  Greyhound, in particular, has not experienced any growth since its last increase between 2006 and 2007, said Greyhound spokeswoman, Abby Wambaugh.  Last year, according to the Greyhound Web site, Greyhound ridership in the U.S. and Canada combined came up short of the 25 million passenger mark.

            Erice said that Greyhound was convenient for short notices like her Sep. 17 trip because she left only two days after deciding to travel.  She said her ticket amounted to only half the price of what driving to Wichita would have cost her.  Erice also said that she would never take Greyhound long distances, though.

            "The way I look at Greyhound is it's basically a simple public transportation on a bigger scheme," Erice said. "They don't try to make you comfortable."

            Erice said she would prefer to ride Amtrak on longer trips because she felt she could trust it more than Greyhound.           

            "If a train breaks down they're liable," Erice said.  "I know of someone who got stuck with Amtrak and they put him up in a hotel and even gave him money for food." 

            Although Greyhound may be suffering some from the new group of passengers like Erice who are choosing Amtrak, it will continue to share some of Amtrak's business through an inter-modal partnership that Wambaugh said the two services have established until Amtrak can cover more of the country.

            Part of the regional transportation market that both Greyhound and Amtrak are trying to draw from is college students.  Magliari said Amtrak has started a Student Advantage Program, and Wambaugh said Greyhound offers a Student Advantage Discount Card that students can buy for $20.

            "It's an important market for us," Magliari said, "because once people use us in college, they will continue to use us later on in life." 

            Wambaugh said she believes she has seen some students have taken advantage of the Greyhound student card because they can do homework and other things during the trip, but that the main reason is economic.

            "It's affordable," Wambaugh said, "especially when other modes can be a hassle and costly."

            More KU students may soon be choosing to use Amtrak's Student Advantage Program to travel between Lawrence and their home towns because Magliari said Amtrak is performing a study to expand its network in Kansas.  As of now, student passengers in Lawrence who want to travel to or from Wichita like Erice can take Amtrak only part of the way and would have to ride a Greyhound bus as part of Amtrak's inter-modal service to travel the rest of their trip.

            Another present obstacle for KU students and Lawrence residents taking Amtrak, though, is the time and location of Amtrak's arrivals in Lawrence.  Every day, only two trains, one westbound and one eastbound, arrive at the Lawrence Amtrak station at 7th and New York at 5:49 a.m. and 12:32 a.m.  The closest "T" Bus station, which is four blocks west and one block north at City Hall, operates only between 6:08 a.m. and 7:31 p.m., so passengers must find another way to travel within Lawrence once they arrive. 

            The closest bus in Lawrence to fitting that time is the KU Student Senate SafeBus, but that bus runs only on Fridays and Saturdays and Derek Meier, transportation coordinator of KU Parking & Transit, said the bus service transports only students with valid KU ID's.  Meier said the University of Kansas "KU on Wheels" bus service started a Reciprocal Policy on August 18 to allow all KU students and "T" Bus passengers to ride on either system but that the policy only included the "KU on Wheels" day service and did not allow "T" Bus passengers to use SafeBus. 

            Meier also said Amtrak passengers could call SafeRide to pick them up on the other nights of the week between 10:30 p.m. and 2:30 a.m. during the school year but that again, any Amtrak passengers without a valid KU student ID and proof of residence could not use that service either.  Meier the KU Route Committee would not evaluate the KU bus routes and times until spring and that he did not know of any proposals yet to better accommodate Amtrak or greyhound passengers.

            "That would be highly unlikely," Meier said.  "It would take tremendous amounts of budget increases."

            In the meantime, the more progressive travelers like Jenny Erice who are not students will simply have to wait for the inter-modal mentality of Greyhound to spread to Lawrence, Wichita and other Kansas towns.

 

Weekly Eastbound Mass-Transportation to Kansas City, MO
Depart (Lawrence)	Arrive (Kansas City)	Duration	Ticket Price
(Greyhound) 10:55 a.m.	11:50 a.m.	55 min.	$16.25
(Greyhound) 5:30 p.m.	6:25 p.m.	55 min.	$16.25
(Amtrak)      5:49 a.m.	7:26 a.m.	37 min.	$17.00
Weekly Westbound Mass-Transportation to Topeka, KS
Depart (Lawrence)	Arrive (Topeka)	Duration	Ticket Price
(Greyhound) 7:40 a.m.	8:15 a.m.	35 min.	$13.75
(Greyhound) 1:35 p.m.	2:00 p.m.	25 min.	$13.75
(Amtrak)     12:32 a.m.	1:06 a.m.	34 min.	$12.00

*Times and prices came from Greyhound and Amtrak official Web sites