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Writer's pictureTate Linden

Why is America's Passenger Rail so Inaccessible?

Infrastructure & effective informational signage matter. 


After experiencing Deutsche Bahn’s platform boarding experience in Germany last month, my first re-exposure to Amtrak’s process (at Union Station DC) feels significantly more frantic and less hospitable. 


In Berlin and Munich, passengers are free to roam the spacious platforms prior to boarding, and spread themselves out across the length of the boarding area at their leisure. Shops are within steps of the cars, and the atmosphere was bustling and yet somehow also relaxed. 


In DC, passengers wait at a gate/holding pen, and are released to the platform about 10 minutes before departure. When the gate is announced, a line forms that line snakes all the way from the gate to the main entrance hall, because the pen itself isn’t big enough to match the capacity of the train. 


I couldn’t find any signage indicating that the long line was for this specific train, and watched a parade of passengers attempt to get into the gate corral, only to be told that the end of the line was all the way back at the hall where they came in. 


For passengers needing accommodations, this seemed particularly frustrating, since there was a separate area set aside for them, but no signage about it until you went past the corral entrance. But they were only informed about its existence after they made it back to the head of the line. 


Once on the platform it’s a mad dash to the train on a long, narrow platform. There’s no information about which cars have seats available. Checking requires going through two doors, meaning that by the time you peek through the second door you’re basically committed to that car because there’s a line of people pushing to get in behind you. 


Prior to getting involved in the rail industry last year, and my recent InnoTrans trip, I was only passively aware of most of these issues. I just assumed that this is what rail travel is like. 


It doesn’t have to be. 


Every issue I’ve mentioned has dozens of organizations that offer viable solutions. Everything from complete station redesign to modest investments in flexible queuing , e-signage and information-rich platform lighting.


Rail is the safest, cleanest, and most efficient form of travel available at scale in the US, and yet we seem only to invest in it as an afterthought, and make people almost literally jump through hoops to use it. 

Public transit - and rail in particular - should be our first priority, not our last. If you’re hesitant to invest, instead of thinking that you’ll never use it, remember that every person or shipment on rails is one less vehicle on the road in front of you in rush hour. One less cause of potholes. One less cause of pollution. 


Right now? I’m on a train with about 400 ‘ones’. Amtrak alone carries about 32,000 a day in this corridor. But a similar corridor in Germany handles triple that amount, and significantly higher speeds. 


We can do better. 


I’m headed to a Deutsche Bahn Rail Innovation event in NYC today to help with the how.

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