(The following story by Tom Bell appeared on the Portland Press Herald website on December 15.)
PORTLAND, Maine — Stephen Jordan, who commutes to Boston every day from his home in Sidney, has perhaps the longest daily commute in all of New England – totaling 1,700 miles a week. It’s doable, he says, only because he spends 1,140 of those miles riding in the comfort of Amtrak’s Downeaster train.
On the train, he says, he can relax and do all the paperwork he used to do at home when he lived in Boston. But instead of living in a cramped Boston condo, he now has a roomy home on a 15-acre spread in Maine, in a little town just north of Augusta.
“I tell you,” he said, “when I get home and look at the sky and the tall trees, I think to myself, it’s worth it.”
Commuters like Jordan account for a growing segment of the Downeaster’s ridership. But Jordan is the only commuter who takes the train from Portland. The rest live in New Hampshire and York County.
On Wednesday, to celebrate the Downeaster’s second anniversary, the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority plans to throw a party for commuters, who will ride in their own car and be feted with free food.
The commuter segment of the Downeaster’s ridership has grown nearly doubled since last year, from 6.4 percent of the total ridership to 11.5 percent. In fiscal 2003, which ended Sept. 30, there were 15,720 commuter trips.
The most-popular commuter run, with 26 commuters in October, is between Exeter, N.H., and Boston. The trip takes one hour and 17 minutes.
Dover, N.H., had four commuters. Wells had five.
The Portland-Boston trip takes two hours and 45 minutes. Portland commuters also have the option of riding the bus, which usually gets to Boston 45 minutes faster.
In all, 56 monthly passes were sold in October, representing 2,240 one-way trips, about 10 percent of that month’s total ridership, said Patricia Douglas, marketing and development director for the rail authority.
Commuters get a significant price break. A monthly pass for unlimited rides between Portland and Boston costs $336. A single round-trip costs $35.
Commuters are important to the Downeaster’s revenue base, Douglas said, because they ride on weekdays when the train has more empty seats, and they ride year-round.
“This is a market that is solid 12 months a year,” she said.
The train’s commuters say the Downeaster is much more than transportation. They say it has become a community.
“It’s unique in terms of Amtrak rail service,” said Bill Lord, a Kennebunkport resident who commutes three days a week to his job at Boston University.
“There’s nothing like it in the country.”
Lord, a journalism professor, operates a Web site for the commuters, www.downeastriders.us. He profiles passengers and Amtrak workers and posts news articles about the service.
On the Downeaster, commuters tend to sit together near the cafe car. They play cards (rummy), share books and show movies on their laptop computers.
Ian Durham of Kennebunk said commuting on the Downeaster is cheaper and more comfortable than driving to Boston or taking the crowded commuter train from Newburyport, Mass.
When he goes on vacation, he misses the train. “It’s kind of like a family,” he says.
Lord conducted an online survey that asked commuters how to improve the service. More than one-third said the train needs to go faster, 79 mph instead of its current limit of 60 mph. A quarter said the service needs more trains.
Another survey showed that 85 percent of the commuters preferred the train’s blue cars over the red cars. The blue cars are considered more comfortable, although the red cars generate more revenue because they have 20 more seats.
It costs more than $2 million annually in government subsidies to operate the Downeaster. Maine kicks in $430,000, and the federal government picks up the rest. The federal subsidy is scheduled to end in July 2005, and it’s unclear what happens after that.
Most commuters live in New Hampshire, which has not contributed a dime toward the service. The New Hampshire towns that have stations, though, have paid for the stations and contribute toward insurance costs.
Bill Spencer, who commutes on the train from his home in Exeter to his job in Boston, said the train reduces congestion on New Hampshire roads and also reduces air pollution.
“I think it’s a little short of criminal that the state of New Hampshire hasn’t contributed anything to the success of this service,” he said.
The service is limited to four trips a day. Most commuters take train number 680, which leaves Portland at 6:05 a.m. and arrives in Boston at 8:50 a.m.
They return on train number 685, which leaves Boston at 6:15 p.m. and arrives in Portland at 9 p.m.
Jordan, who must drive more than an hour just to get to the station in Portland, leaves his house at 4:30 a.m. and gets to his Boston office at 9 a.m. In the evening, he’s home by 10:15 p.m.
A financial consultant, he spends 8 1/2 hours of his day getting to work and back home. He has been commuting five days a week for two months now.
When he moved to Maine, he had planned to work at home and telecommute, but that didn’t work out. His wife found a job as a nurse in Waterville, and he has accepted his new lifestyle without complaint.
“It’s the ultimate in time management,” Jordan said. “I know exactly where I spend every hour of my day.”