Did you know that you can show up 20 minutes before departure, park the car, buy a ticket -- $72 round trip from Fresno to Richmond -- and make the train?
Plus you're allowed to board without taking off your belt and shoes or having to tell the security screener that a hunk of metal in your left ankle is making the buzzer go off.
(If you're thinking about a Letter to the Editor demanding that Amtrak beef up security, please don't write it. All that screening, drama and hassle at the airport is needless theater -- the act of pretending to do something important.)
After boarding the train, you'll notice something else: there's room to breathe and move about. The chairs and aisles are wider than in air coach. There are sections where passengers can sit around a table. On my trip, business travelers used the tables to work, college students wrote papers or watched movies on laptops and kids played games.
Anybody who didn't want to work had plenty of options: take in the scenery, read, sleep or mosey to the club car for grub and drink. That's right, there's room for riders to pass each other in the aisle.
For short trips, the train is more enjoyable than flying, which has become the equivalent of root canal at 30,000 feet. And it's more productive than driving -- unless you have a chauffeur.
With fuel prices soaring, more people are taking to rail and liking it. The San Joaquin line carried 96,476 passengers last month, a 34% increase over June of last year, according to Amtrak.
Company officials say that customer satisfaction and on-time performance is improving. The San Joaquin line, for example, had an 86% on-time performance in May, and 88% of riders surveyed that month said they were satisfied with their experience.
If California voters approve the High Speed Rail proposition on the November ballot, the bullet train could combine with an upgraded Amtrak system to dramatically improve how we get around.
But that's a big if. Passenger rail -- high speed and Amtrak -- has plenty of opponents.
Some people say that trains should be the province of private enterprise, and the fact that they are government- subsidized is proof of their inefficiency. Swallowing that argument requires a rational person to overlook the massive government investment in highways and airports.
Then there are politicians like state Sen. Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield. Ashburn is so wedded to oil, cars and planes that he can't fathom the importance of transforming California for the better by investing in high-speed rail.
This fact should be plainly clear: long hauls are best made on planes because the speed of air travel trumps the accompanying inconvenience. Besides, traveling across the country by train costs more than flying.
But trains are the preferred ticket for shorter trips, and the airline industry's abandonment of short-haul routes speaks loudly that it recognizes what the future holds.
Plane or train?
Try the train next time.
You might be surprised how fresh you feel at the end of the trip.
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