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| Photo by Bill Adler |
by Peggy Robin
Now that I have a daughter living and working in New York
City (outer borough) I am pondering the many modes of transportation that can
take me there for occasional visits.
The Washington Post has from time to time assigned a quartet
of travel writers to race from DC to a meeting place in New York City, one by
train, one by bus, one by plane, and one by driving a car. (The Washington Post
web search function is so poor that I could not pull up any of those past
articles – but that’s a subject for another column in itself.) Those articles
are never any help to me, anyway, because the test conditions never match the peculiar
demands of my specific trip. Take, for
example, the time my daughter asked me to bring her several boxes of stuff from
home. Lamps, quilts, books – more than could be fit into a suitcase or two. I
contemplated boxing everything up for shipping, but after calculating the
mailing costs and the harder-to-quantify inconvenience at both ends, the answer
seemed clear: I should load up the car and drive, and then unload at her front
door.
Then there was the time that moderate snowfall was predicted
on the day I wanted to go. I had been thinking of going by bus, but as the date
drew nearer and the odds of heavier snowfall increased, I decided to play it
safe and book the train instead. It was a wise move: on the morning of the
trip, even some trains had been cancelled. Though I got to Union Station half
an hour early, the line to board the train was already running the length of
the concourse. By the time I got on, there were just a few seats available here
and there. I was happy to find a seat in the “Quiet Car” but unhappy to
discover that quite a few of the car’s occupants that day were seated there not
by choice, and consequently, had no inclination to follow the quiet car rules
against cell-phone yakking. On the
packed train, the conductors, usually efficient and diplomatic enforcers of the
quiet rule, were too harried by all the passenger ticketing problems and
complaints to spend any time shushing the loudmouths. That made for a long,
uncomfortable trip. Arriving in the city forty minutes late, I felt fortunate
to have made it at all.
Then there’s the bus. It’s my go-to option if I don’t need
to make efficient use of time. I know that it’s always possible for a four hour
trip to turn into six or seven hours. No matter the weather or the occasion, an
hour-long backup of traffic on I-95 can
always materialize for no discernible reason. On most bus lines the seats are of
an uncomfortably scratchy fabric and they’re crammed close together. I’m short,
but I still need at least a modicum of legroom.The wifi is out more often than
not, and the electrical outlets unreliable. But the price is twenty bucks. Or
even five bucks, if you can nab a special rate. Or no bucks, if you have a
frequent-rider card and you’ve made enough round-trips. For the frugal-minded,
that’s reason enough to keep on booking. It’s only when I’m two-and-a-half
hours into a five-hour trip, with my overheated laptop balanced on one knee and
a falling-apart sandwich leaking mayonnaise onto the other, that I recall the
truth of the old cliché, “you get what you pay for.”
Which brings me back to the car. When you’re the driver, you
can’t work on your computer (obviously) and there’s nothing more boring than
staring at lane markers for hours on end; even the most compelling book on tape
can’t make you glad to be on the road. But a co-driver can do a lot to ease the
hardship -- assuming that person shares your ideas about speed, frequency of
bathroom breaks, and accompanying audio track. Still, a good co-driver is hard
to find.
So back to the title question – what’s the best mode of
travel to get from DC to NYC? Here’s the answer that seems most truthful to my
own experiences: There is no best way, only a lot of not-so-great ways. Depending
on the conditions and requirements of the trip, one way may be more practical
than another. That just makes it less bad – not best.
Will the choices ever improve? Where’s that jet-pack we were
promised so long ago? (You may find one answer to that question here: http://www.martinjetpack.com/news/174-martin-aircraft-begins-trading-on-the-asx
). When we will get our Google Self-Driving Cars? (An answer for that here: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/28/google-self-driving-car-how-does-it-work).
The thing I most wish for? “Beam me up, Scotty!”
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Still Life With Robin is published on the Cleveland ParkListserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.
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