Transportation Thoughts on my Portland Trip

I’m on my way home from a quick trip to Portland, so its time to talk about the transportation.

First lets talk about how I got to Portland. I chose to take the train. If you’re just comparing block times it makes taking the train look like it takes an eternity over flying, and its even longer than the three hour or so drive. Alaska Airlines runs a flight between the two that blocks at just about 50 minutes. But comparing a 50 minute to plane ride to a 50 minute train ride is a grossly inaccurate comparison.

I arrived to both train stations 15 minutes before departure time. Thats not arriving at the gate, thats walking in the front door of the station. For the plane, Alaska suggests that you arrive 90 minutes in advance, if you don’t have bags or two hours if you do. These are aggressively padded times, so lets figure half of that is really what you need. I’ve found that works just fine. So you’ve gotta arrive 45 minutes in advance. So we’re upto an hour and a half for the plane, and the train? Its 3 hours and 45 minutes.

But if I’m flying out of Seattle I need to actually get to the airport, so thats another 45 minutes by light rail, 20 minutes if I’m taking a car, and 10 more minutes if I’m needing to park at the airport. The walk for me to the light rail station is virtually the same as it is to the Amtrak station, so I’m counting it as taking no time. The scorecard? Plane: 2 hours 15 minutes Train: 3 hours 45 minutes.

Then when I get there I’ve gotta leave the vicinity of the airport. In Portland getting to my first destination would take another 24 minutes driving or an hour on public transit. On the train? Walking its 15 minutes and public transit is about the same. Score: Plane: 2 hours 45 minutes Train: 4 hours.

So the train takes an hour and 15 minutes more. However, taking the train means you don’t have to deal with the TSA, nor do you have any times where you’re restricted from doing things. I’ve had my tray table down on the train since I sat down before leaving either eating or using the laptop. Plus you can make phone calls just about the whole way on Amtrak, thats not quite the case flying.

Finally, price comes in. I paid $55.80 for the train trip with only a single discount, a similar plane ticket two months out would be $161.40, so that hour and 15 minutes longer on the train? It saves just over $40 per hour. That is without even attempting to calculate the productivity increase while traveling.

So to go to Portland the train wins hands down as far as I’m concerned with the exception of frequency. Alaska runs a shit ton of flights between Portland and Seattle; Amtrak runs five trains each way.

Oh, there is one other thing about Portland. I’ve heard people crow and extoll virtues of Portland’s Streetcar. Yes, its good, but as far as I’m concerned it isn’t reasonable to compare Portland’s Streetcar to Seattle’s bus system.

Geographically they’re hugely different places. Portland has a large street gridded area completely unimpeded by natural barriers. Seattle on the other hand built its downtown on a fucking hill. Not one of those pansy gently rolling hills. In downtown there is a change of 190 feet over half a mile or a 7.2% grade; if it were an interstate it’d get one of those signs telling truckers to stay in a lower gear.

Yes, Seattle needs more trains and streetcars, but comparing getting around in Seattle and Portland isn’t really fair.

The trip? It was great!