(The following article by Cathy Woodruff was posted on the Albany Times-Union website on June 29.)
ABOARD AMTRAK TRAIN 246 — They climb aboard, laptops in hand, and quickly find seats among the booths lining the end of the cafe car.
Within minutes, their computers are online. They chat with companions at their tables and across the aisle and sip coffee served up by Gerry Rodriguez, who in his 21 years with Amtrak has mastered the challenge of pouring any number of beverages on a moving train.
“We hang out and we check in. I dial up the Internet, and we do our stuff,” said Judy Schmitz, who on this particular morning had left her computer behind in Rhinecliff.
Instead, she’s knitting, picking up some pointers from a fellow commuter on a thorny computer problem and chatting about her latest passion: saving the cafe car on Amtrak’s daily trains between Rensselaer and New York City.
Starting Friday, Amtrak plans to end food and beverage service on the dozen or more trains that begin or end their runs in Rensselaer each day. The cash-strapped railroad says the move will save about $1 million, including labor and stock costs and the cost of a contract with the airline caterer that stocks trains in Rensselaer.
But Schmitz, who commutes daily to her job with AOL Time Warner in New York City via Amtrak, is among a core of regular passengers who are steamed about the plan.
The cafe car, with its ready supply of coffee, bagels, beer and sandwiches, is the hub for a collegial subculture of commuters and day-trippers who count on Rodriguez and his colleagues on other trains to perk up the ride.
“It’s kind of embarrassing to be rabble-rousing for a cafe car, but in terms of quality of life for commuters, it’s huge,” said Schmitz, who runs an online sweater sales business during her commute.
In addition to the commuters, last Wednesday’s cafe car customers included fathers and sons on their way to a Yankees game and several state workers headed for meetings in the city.
“I guess I can understand the economics, but I just don’t understand taking away amenities that make train travel more pleasant,” said Cheryl Gelder-Kogan of Menands, a consultant working with New York University Medical Center, who grabbed a coffee and an omelette-and-cheese bagel shortly after boarding the 6:55 a.m. train out of Rensselaer.
“It’s not spectacular, but it keeps me till lunch,” she said.
For Joe DiMura of Guilderland, it’s on the other end of his occasional trips to the city when an Amtrak sandwich feels like a lifesaver.
“I often hit this car and have not had anything to eat since 6 or 7 in the morning,” said DiMura, a state Department of Environmental Conservation engineer who was on his way to a program at New York University Law School.
For many regulars, the cafe car has become something of an office away from the office, where they work, share professional advice and socialize.
“We’ve got two parties coming up,” including a July Fourth bash and a pre-wedding celebration for a pair of other regulars, said Adam Blumenthal of Red Hook, who produces Web sites for an ad agency.
Blumenthal landed his current job as the result of chance conversations he struck up with a fellow commuter on the train.
“In all seriousness, we have a lot of fun, but we do get a lot of work done here,” said Navin Sharma of Tivoli, a marketing consultant whose laptop also was running during the ride.
The cafe car itself, which includes a business class section in front, will stay on all trains into New York City from upstate, said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black. Business class customers, who pay an extra $16 from Rensselaer, will keep their bigger seats and their complimentary newspapers but will lose their free beverages.
Black said eliminating the food service on trains between New York and Rensselaer — trains that travel beyond Rensselaer will continue to have food — is the latest result of pressure to cut costs.
Nationally, Amtrak lost $92.5 million on food service last year, and the remaining food service on the Empire Corridor will continue to lose money after July 1 — just not as much, Black said.
“Amtrak is aware of the value of food service,” he said. “We realize that it’s an important part of the experience of traveling by train, and a very positive part of the experience. But when you have losses such as we do related to providing food,” he said, it’s too costly to continue.
Amtrak is the target of an intense budget-cutting campaign by President Bush, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and some in Congress.
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee voted to spend $550 million on Amtrak in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, down from this year’s $1.2 billion and far short of the $1.8 billion the railroad requested.
Congressional supporters of the cut say it merely will force the elimination of long-distance routes with big losses.
“If it is passed, Amtrak would stop running any trains, not just the long-distance trains and not just out of spite,” Black said. “It would simply be inadequate funding to run any of the trains because of debt service and several hundred millions in severance pay required for those who lost their jobs in route discontinuances.”
Schmitz and her fellow commuters acknowledge that Amtrak has bigger problems than their local cafe mutiny. But they see the move as a foolish slap in the face for some of Amtrak’s best boosters.
“As commuters, we are paying significantly more than if we drove down to Poughkeepsie and took Metro-North,” the lower-priced commuter line run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, noted Mike Espindle of Elizaville, the managing editor of Elite Traveler, a magazine for passengers on private jets.
Espindle picks up breakfast or dinner on the train at least a couple times each week and enjoys unwinding with a beer during the festive atmosphere of a Friday ride home. For adults traveling with small children, the cafe car always is an essential stop during the trip, he added.
Rodriguez, who moved to Albany about 10 years ago when he began working regularly on the Albany-to-New York trains, likely will keep his job because of seniority, but it may move to New York City. When asked if he’ll move with his wife and family to be closer to his new job, he shrugged. “That would be the most logical thing to do, but I don’t want to move back to New York,” Rodriguez said. “Maybe I’ll become a commuter.”