Train stations--why we should have more of them

To understand why I think we should have more train stations, perhaps we should look at what a train station really is. I’m not going to limit these comments to U.S. stations, or even to North America, as there are stupendous stations in Europe and Japan.

Of course, logic tells us that a train station is a place where trains stop to pick up and discharge passengers. This is our early 21st century experience.

However, at one time, a train station was also a place where trains would pick up and deliver packages and less-than-carload freight. Beyond this, a train station often performed many functions now given over to modern computers and signaling systems. In those bygone days, an operator often had to man the station at all times, meaning three shifts of at least one operator per shift.

Our current-era experience also does not tell us that train stations, without exception, all sold tickets on the train to just about anywhere a train could go. It didn’t matter if the destination station was on the line or off it, the station agent or ticket agent could figure out a routing and issue a ticket that would get the passenger there. And, often, return by a different route.

Online travel agencies and web sites of issuing carriers now sell most tickets. It is obvious that no train station is needed for this, though ticket agents still populate a few desks at some train stations.

Beyond all this—the nuts and bolts of travel by train—a train station is often the most architecturally significant building in a city or town. This applies to wherever trains carry passengers. A brief survey of Google images of train stations around the world will give one a sense of just how much time and effort has been put into the proper functional and esthetic design of train stations.

The indoor or regional shopping mall came into being in the mid-twentieth century as a place where retailers, restaurants, and other businesses assembled under one roof, with each reachable from the other after only a short walk. Train stations, however, in the late 19th and early 20th century were actually the first places where this concept took root. At one time, one could find everything from a shoemaker to an appliance store equally reachable a short walk from stepping off a train.

This is still true in Europe and parts of Asia. In the U.S., big city stations that survived the wrecker and redevelopment have leaned in this direction, but the large, airy, high-roofed open spaces associated with malls and earlier big-city stations are no longer there.

Small town stations, in the same period of time, also became focal points of a town’s social and commercial fabric. People coming and going for every possible reason were supplemented by goods arriving and departing in express and LCL shipments. The lifeblood of a town, ebbing and flowing, could be seen in every station.

Why then, should we have more stations? Primarily, I think, because we should have more passenger train service in North America.

Amtrak and VIA have been bare bones operations from their inceptions. While Amtrak has added trains in the Northeast, California, and in some other corridors where state sponsorship lessens the capital burden for starting new service, it has become even barer in other parts of the country, and that’s bad. VIA has a slightly different mandate from the Canadian government, but is still shedding trains whenever possible. Neither liberal nor conservative governments on both sides of the border seem to mind, as legislators and Canadian MPs seem to view passenger rail as an antiquated form of transportation. The rest of North America (effectively Mexico) has no organized passenger rail system whatsoever.

To start, stations should be added to every Amtrak long-distance route for every city and town of a designated minimum size (make it reasonable) along the entire route. These should be purposed for the same reasons that stations of the last century weren’t just a place to buy a ticket and get on or off a train. Eventually, Amtrak (or whatever survives Amtrak) should start to provide local, all-stop trains as well as scheduled long-distance, end-to-end trains. Then the big name trains wouldn’t have to make every stop.

Especially since 9/11, airports no longer qualify as the place where a town’s lifeblood can ebb and flow, unless you count the big clot that is airport security, and the big hemorrhage that is airline quality of service. To make us stronger, we need those socially affirming places that don’t involve massive amounts of stress and anxiety.

TOD (or Transit Oriented Development) is a big thing in many U.S. cities, but I think we can also look at ROD (Rail Oriented) for development concurrent with the construction of new passenger rail stations, eventually serving new routes, and creating a new network the goes beyond what Amtrak (and VIA in Canada) have ever offered.

It will take determination, and capital, and something called social pressure. Would you like to live and work near a rail station where you can also shop, play, and board a train to just about every other city of any size in North America, without having to drive or go to the airport or endure the stress of either? I know I would. How about the rest of you?

Tell your Senator, Representative, or Member of Parliament why we should have more train stations.

©2017 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com

(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)