A Downer of a Day in the Northeast

Amtrak from Washington to New York: easy travel but sad scenery

It has been years since I've taken the train on any but the shortest stretch of the Northeast Corridor. I did this morning for the first time in years. I arrived at Union Station in time for the 8:35 a.m. train, one earlier than my reservation. Amtrak is flexible and changed my ticket -- but charged nearly $30 -- not as a change fee but because the earlier train carried a higher fare. When I asked why, the agent told me it was because more people travel earlier. If more people travel earlier, I would have been the only person on the later train. My car, at least, had an extremely low passenger load -- less than 10 percent. I'm guessing flexible travelers were taking the later train, because it's cheaper, but that's just a guess. The trip was comfortable and punctual.

But too often, the view out the window was incredibly sad -- no surprise to those who travel this route often, but a knock in the eye and a punch in the gut to me after so many years away from the Northeast. Especially in and near our cities, I saw long-shuttered factories, their windows broken, their brick walls encrusted with graffiti. Trackside litter: paper, cans, plastic bottles, old tires, chunks of concrete, car parts, hunk of cable. Weeds. Fallen-down dwellings. It sad -- sadder than I remembered. Decay in the fly-over states tends to be shuttered stores in the small centers of depopulated towns, done in by the Interstate highways, the loss of the railroad and WalMart somewhere down the way. In the urban Northeast, decay is in the middle of densely populated areas. I knew it in my head and on one level what it looked like, but I had forgotten how it hits the eyes and the emotions.

My spirit was further dampened by the weather. The sky was gray, as was the landscape. Most of the trees hadn't leafed out yet. The clouds released fat drops of cold rain. Mud made the litter and trash somehow look even worse. I am reading Anderson Cooper's memoir, Dispatches from the Edge, and as the train traveled through scenes of decades of decay. He wrote about the terrible destruction he reported on in New Orleans the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the US, Lousiana and local governments' unpreparedness and lack of response, calling the American system "broken." Having been to too many war zones and seen entirely too many dead bodies, he wrote that he hadn't expected it in his own country. Likewise, while I am bothered by roadside trash and broken-down buildings in developing countries, it seems inexcusable in our own.

When arrived in New York, I allowed myself the extravagance of a taxi to the hotel, because I wasn't in the mood to drag my bags (a small roll-aboard and my laptop bag) up and down wet subway stairs, and I didn't want to get soaked waiting for the two buses I would have to take just to get close to my hotel.

As the cab crawled through traffic, I wondered which African runners had won the Boston Marathon, what the weather was like in Beantown and whether any Coloradans performed well. I later learned that Deriba Merga of Ethiopia won the men's race, Kenya’s Salina Kosgei was the top woman and Americans placed third in both, with Boulder's Colleen de Rueck eighth among women in a race that started on a cool morning and got worse.

After I checked in, I bundled up in my raingear and went for a walk, because tomorrow will be an indoor day. More gray. More rain. Water-filled potholes on every block. Cabs splashing through the water. Pedestrians who have trained themselves to step back from curb. More gray. More rain. I walked down East 45th Street, where I once worked. Some smaller buildings had been replaced by big shiny ones. Two doors from my old office building, now remodeled and gussied up, a three- or four-story Catholic mission used to shelter and feed and homeless men. The building was now abandoned, probably slated for redevelopment -- once the economy picks up. At the nearby United Nations, the news was that anti-Israeli remarks made by Iran's president prompted delegates to walk out of an anti-racism conference.

Deciding to switch from miserable macro-cosmic new, I picked up a copy of a free lower Manhattan newspaper to see what was happening locally. I read it while I nibbled some sushi. It seems that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and developer Larry Silverman are at odds over the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. They are tussling about the order in which the new buildings are to be constructed and, of course, who is to pay for the construction -- or guarantee the bonds. The year 2039 was mentioned as the completion date for the WTC replacement.

The rain let up, but the evening remained chilly and damp. I know that before I return to Colorado, the clouds will lift, the puddles will dry, the sun will come out and the street trees will be in bloom. New York will look better, and my mood will improve too. It always does.