Breakfast Link

A day that starts with Amtrak offers a glimpse of the power of trains in shaping and supporting urban life

For 15 years, I went to work just like everybody else in middle class Milwaukee. I hopped in my car and drove. In ten minutes, fifteen if I stopped for a cup of coffee, I'd pull into a parking spot alongside the cars of hundreds of other people who also drove themselves to work every day.

For the last four months, however, my day has started in a way that's highly unusual for folks from this area. I take the train.

In January, I accepted a job in Chicago's Loop and added 170 miles to my daily commute. Friends and acquaintances began asking me when I planned to move south. New job, new city, new home. One seemed to follow ineluctably from the other.

I didn't see it that way. A few years earlier, an exhaustive, nine-month search had led me to purchase a brick Riverwest duplex where tenants contributed toward my mortgage payment. I'd be lucky to pay three times as much per month for similar lodgings in Chicago. Add to this equation a relationship growing more serious in Milwaukee, and I decided to stay put.

That answer drew a lot of sorry looks from the friends and acquaintances. They made it clear they'd rather submit to twice daily dental work than Chicago's monstrous morning and evening rush hours. And if the interstate were my only option, I'd be with them. Childhood trips visiting grandparents in Illinois had convinced me that the stretch of I-94 in question was not just traffic-choked; it had to be the second most boring stretch of highway in the country — only outdone by the lifeless roadscape we encountered when we pushed on through Indiana. Twice a day on those roads, with a little talk radio thrown in to kill the time? I'd rather volunteer for twice daily brain surgery.

There's more than one road to Chicago. And the one less traveled offers the best views.

Fortunately, I-94 is not the only way to reach Chicago. Amtrak's Hiawatha service leaves the downtown station each weekday morning at 6:20 and 8:00 a.m. Hundreds of us ride these trains each morning and return each evening, with more boarding and departing at Sturtevant near Racine. Day shoppers and other less regular riders keep these rush-hour trains nearly full.

Amtrak trains feature airplane seats, and we commuters make full use of their features. Some hit the recline button and sleep the hour and a half away. Others use the flip-down tray each morning to lay out coffee, bagels and newspaper. When that's cleared, we bring out laptops and cell phones. With sun streaming through the cabin, the Hiawatha becomes a moving office that treats us to a constantly changing view.

We roll by pastures, marshes, oak savannas. Could this really be the same intolerable stretch of land that once induced nausea? Yes and no. Along most of the route, just a few miles separate I-94 from the old Milwaukee Road tracks used by Amtrak. But the two routes offer different worlds out the windows.

In urban areas, the view from the interstate is a grassy trench, a concrete channel or a sound-barrier canyon. Towards the fringe, the landscape flattens and the buffer widens. On either side runs a graded ribbon of land full of highway things — frontage roads, off ramps, clover-leafs, highway signs and billboards. As an exit nears, the landscape swells with objects catering to cars — gas stations, big box stores, parking lots.

The differences between this scene and the tableau that unfolds outside a train window

suggest deep differences in how trains and automobiles shape their environs.

Train tracks require nary a buffer, as evidenced by the collision course engine train cars seem to make for the vintage 1st Street building now known as Fifth Street Lofts. Fortunately, the building has a chunk taken out of its northeast corner, creating a few feet of clearance. Trains practically slice through their surroundings, making the view out the window a series of quick cuts — lofts, warehouses, dumpsters, brush, cottage rooftops, backyard jungle gyms. It's there. It's gone. It's just beyond arm's reach.

As a stop nears, the landscape also fills, but not with parking lots and drive-through restaurants. Instead, there's a station with an inviting awning. An old tavern usually hugs a nearby street corner. There may be a greasy spoon — or an Asian noodle shop if the town's gone upscale. If it's a significant town or suburb, there will be a main street lined with shops and offices.

Chicago's competitive edge.

Or, left behind by our "right" to drive.

The environment around a station accommodates what a train provides — people on foot. By delivering them to this spot again and again and again — some on Amtrak, but legions more on commuter trains that have plied these routes for the better part of a century — trains have shaped this space, making it more intimate than space you find elsewhere.

It's hardly a rare phenomenon. A similar process shaped countless neighborhoods in Milwaukee, once upon a time. The storefronts that line city streets with coffee shops, lounges, shoe stores and salons didn't get there by accident. They were placed to capture a stream of customers delivered by the streetcars running up and down the street. Brady Street, Downer Avenue, KK, Center Street — the city's most beloved hangouts would be nondescript thoroughfares today if a transit planner had moved the streetcar line a few blocks over.

It's not an understatement to say that trains altered the course of our city's history. In 1850, Milwaukee had 20,000 residents; Chicago had 30,000. On a percentage basis, Milwaukee had been closing the gap over the past decade. Before the age of rail — when steamships were the best way to move goods and people around the Great Lakes — Milwaukee's more northerly port location gave it the slight advantage of being a bit closer to eastern ports. But then rail arrived. Chicago's location at the southern tip of Lake Michigan left it perfectly poised for the intermodal age that followed. It was better positioned for east-west rail routes — and still well positioned for transferring rail freight to lake steamers, which remained a cheaper option for many years to come. With the two cities locked in a struggle for regional supremacy, rail tipped the balance in Chicago's favor. And rail has helped that city never look back.

When our car arrives in Chicago, we walk the platform and merge with throngs of riders from Metra commuter trains. More than 135,000 people take these trains to Chicago each morning. Waves and waves of them spill out of greater Union Station — both from the great beaux arts station house proper and newer subterranean passageways that release passengers like vents releasing steam. Even larger numbers ride Chicago's "L" trains and buses.

Meanwhile, 85 miles north of Union Station, traffic engineers and regional planners imagine a transportation system built almost entirely around automobiles. The County Executive of cash-strapped Milwaukee County cuts bus routes, extends already lengthy waiting periods at bus stops, and blocks progress on plans for a transit connector that would have its own right of way and offer superior service to buses. Meanwhile, he and most other regional leaders support spending $6.5 billion — sending taxpayers a million dollar bill 6,500 times — on an inefficient plan to add a lane to the freeways in Milwaukee, Waukesha and Ozaukee counties. The plan would shorten freeway commutes by 5 minutes or less.

The opponents of public transit suggest there's something unrealistic and impractical about commuting by rail. Today's commuters are drivers. The waves of people leaving Union Station should be driving and working in miles and miles of office parks that provide ample parking. That's their right as Americans.

But there's no stopping these train riders. They form a human stream that moves east across the river to the Loop, where they work in a set of tall office buildings that create some of the highest office real estate values per square foot in the world. Collectively, their footsteps tap out a simple message to the transit opponents: "Hey fellas, leave the keys and the parking and traffic worries at home. Relax and enjoy the ride." VS

Former journalist and City Hall advisor Stephen Filmanowicz works for the Congress for the New Urbanism. To learn more about how CNU promotes walkable, urban communities, visit http://www.cnu.org.