Leave your car and enjoy the view on your trip to the Berkshires

Evan Gottesman and his fiancée, Gabrielle Kleyner, were meeting friends in the Berkshires for a weekend in early July. The Brooklyn couple are trying to find a way to rural western Massachusetts, which annually attracts thousands of hikers, theater and music enthusiasts with its mountains and lakes. and its numerous cultural centers.

A friend told them about the Berkshire Flyer, a new Amtrak train between New York City and Pittsfield. The couple quickly booked their tickets and hopped on the 3:15 p.m. sold-out train from Moynihan Train Hall in Manhattan on July 8.

Without realizing it, they entered Flyer’s maiden voyage, a milestone in at least four years and the result of countless emails, meetings, and phone calls between Amtrak and its partners. state legislators and transportation officials who wished for more direct rail lines between New York and Massachusetts.

When Mr Gottesman and Mrs Kleyner arrived in Pittsfield that evening, they saw dozens of people on the platform, cheering wildly and taking pictures. State and city officials held a gleeful press conference. Someone opened a bottle of champagne.

“It was the most beautiful welcome I have ever stepped off the Amtrak,” said Mr Gottesman, 27.

For the first time in 50 years, a passenger train from New York has arrived in Pittsfield, a city of more than 40,000 civilians that is overlooked by tourists when visiting popular parts of the county such as Tanglewood in Lenox, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, or Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams.

More than 60 people showed up that evening on the Berkshire Flyer, ran only once on Friday and returned Sunday afternoon. Passenger numbers are modest but encouraging business owners and government officials are keeping a close eye on the pilot program that runs through Labor Day.

Also encouraging: the number of trains sold out. After the first cruise, trains to Pittsfield continued to fill up regularly, and while seats up north were still empty in August, trains back to New York were completely sold out through the weekend. Labor, according to Amtrak.

“It’s in its early stages,” said Lindsey Tuller, 42, co-owner of the Berkshire General Store in Pittsfield, about two blocks from the train station. “But I think it could be a big deal.”

It “starts with local interests”

Flyer is one of many new services and restored rail lines that Amtrak has announced in recent months.

On July 29, the Ethan Allen Express, the New York to Rutland, Vt. rail line, will be extended 66 miles northwest to the city of Burlington as part of another new program.

In Virginia, Amtrak has added more daily trips from Roanoke and Norfolk to Washington.

International routes that have been shut down because of the resurgence of the pandemic, including the Maple Leaf train between New York and Toronto and the Cascades train between Seattle and Vancouver, will resume in September.

In Jacksonville, NC, a $10 million bus depot opened in June to take passengers about 84 miles north to Amtrak station in Wilson.

Anthony Prinz, the city’s director of transit services, said the project, which Jacksonville officials have been planning since 2010, is funded by the Federal Transportation Administration.

Similar projects would be funded by a bipartisan infrastructure bill that President Biden signed into law Roger Harris, president of Amtrak, said last year, especially in states and communities, had begun planning.

“It really starts with local interest,” Mr. Harris said. “That’s why it’s important for local communities to get in on their game and say, ‘Yes, please, we want to be in on this.'”

Amtrak created an expanded map offers a vision of how it could bring dozens more routes to more than 160 cities and towns around the country.

New law, spending $66 billion on railroads, comes at a time when travelers are looking for ways to save on fuel costs and across the country in a more sustainable way.

The funding also comes as Amtrak continues to recover from a drop in rider numbers caused by the pandemic. According to Amtrak, the rail service recorded nearly 16 million rides between October 2021 and June 2022, compared with about 24 million during the same period in 2019.

According to Amtrak officials, nearly 20%, or $12 billion, of total rail funding is devoted to services outside the Northeast, giving cities and towns that want to be part of the the proposed expansion, according to Amtrak officials.

North Carolina already has a plan.

Jason Orthner, director of railroads for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, said the goal over the next decade is to work with Virginia to build a new 110-mile, hour-long, and engaging train line. Millions of people stay away from congested highways.

“It’s certainly a different picture of life with the ship than looking at it through a windshield on a multi-storey motorway,” Mr Orthner said.

“Beautiful as I expected”

The Berkshire Flyer doesn’t need new infrastructure, just an Amtrak train that will run from Albany to Pittsfield (usually about an hour’s ride) and an agreement with CSX, the transportation operator that owns the rail lines.

Jay Green, a former Amtrak official who is now a town manager in Adams, Mass., says these tracks from New York to Pittsfield have existed since the 1850s, when passenger and freight trains were transported. operated by private companies.

But as cars and planes became the country’s preferred means of transportation, trains became less profitable.

Amtrak, the federally subsidized passenger train system, was established in 1971.

“It’s the end of passenger traffic to Pittsfield, along with many other cities across the country,” Mr Green said.

The sight of people flooding onto the Pittsfield station platform on July 8, many of them in their 20s and 30s, led Adam G. Hinds, a Pittsfield state senator, to imagine the Flyer would become an epidemic. year round service.

One of those young people, Kareem Wedderburn, a regional planning student at Westfield State University in Massachusetts and self-described transit nerdtook the early morning train from Springfield, Mass., to New York on Friday morning to make sure he was on the first Berkshire Flyer train.

“I wanted to be a part of history,” said 20-year-old Wedderburn, adding that he marveled at the scenery along the way: the Hudson River, the rolling hills, the large houses.

“It was just as beautiful as I expected,” he said, recalling that other passengers opened bottles of chilled white wine in business class while others were reading or working on their computers. .

Some stared out the windows at the motorists inching their way along the highway.

“Look at all the traffic you can avoid now,” said Mr Wedderburn.

Conversion potential

John Riley, manager of Mission, a restaurant and bar in Pittsfield, says a steady stream of tourists will be a boon to the city’s eclectic mix of antique shops and cafes. and restaurant.

“The biggest thing the Flyer can do, not just for us, but for anyone, is more pedestrian traffic and more people coming to North Street,” said 29-year-old Riley. “I want to see more young people, more people using the bike path.”

Ms. Tuller, co-owner of the Berkshire General Store, said the train could help other parts of the local economy.

“I know people who have tried to be an Uber driver in the area but haven’t had enough calls to make it worthwhile,” she said.

Eric Lesser, a state senator representing neighboring Hampden and Hampshire counties, said the Flyer could encourage New Yorkers who can work remotely to move to western Massachusetts.

Its success could also spur plans for a train between Boston and Pittsfield called east west streetwill stop along the other walkable, post-industrial towns of western Massachusetts that were once a stop for the passenger railroad and are hungry for tourist dollars.

“They are ripe for a renaissance,” Mr. Lesser said. “There’s huge potential.”