Amtrak

SOS!

A German-French-Japanese consortium should take over Amtrack immediately.*

I had one of the biggest shocks of my life walking into King Street Station on the Friday before Labor Day 2010: a train station that had not undergone any kind of interior restoration in over half a century. Peeling paint...beautiful stucco moldings. It was like finding oneself in a warped time capsule: iPod and grunge rock meet "Citizen Kane."

Tokyo over twenty (20) years ago already had vastly superior integrated subway-train stations than Seattle in 2010. The subway station ("Metro:") blends seamlessly into the nationwide train system.

At Amtrack's King Station, one has to do a nasty, four-block 270 degree (over train tracks) detour from the front entrance proper just to get inside from the "bargain-basement" bunker back of the King Station.

America deserves so much better than this.

Inside King Station, it was dark, hot, badly lit, dirty, crowded, and chaotic. There were only two agents at the ticket counter. And two ticket machines. I didn't see any other Amtrack employees.anywhere. There might have been a few vending machines.

Nothing in the way of amenities of any sort, unless you count wooden benches. Or men's and women's restrooms.

Mostly young people milling around with backpacks. In another hour when the majority of passengers would really start arriving, King Station would even resemble more a scene from the Great Depression. There was dust suspended in the air...

And all along I had thought Amtrack was a step above Greyhound...in the end, I simply gave up and canceled my trip to Portland.

An annoying automated phone system with poor voice recognition. Why not just post online the information, e.g., train status?

Very nice live Web agents, though, and it is not difficult to speak to one (Are you listening, Bank of America? Comcast?). Easy to modify or cancel reservations.

The red brick campanile tower, resembling that of San Marco in Venice, is a beautiful sight in any case.

* Since it is obvious that in this country the government will not move on mass transit, even though it bailed out Wall Street.

** In late October 2011, Algiers (!), the capital of Algeria, had a 10 kilometer mass transit line inaugurated, Yes, we beat them by one year! Congrats, Seattleites!

Looks like Obama's going slow on this one--high-speed mass transit--too. Not likely to change ("Change you can believe in!") soon, either.

* * * * *

LONDON - PARIS Now it's a two-hour trip on the latest high-technology trains (about 400 kilometers/hour).

http://video.google.co...

It has taken me over two hours to get from IKEA in Southcenter back to Capitol Hill.