Planning For Land Use Is Mandatory

Let me tell you a story:

     May 2024, Death Cab For Cutie was celebrating the 20th anniversary of one of the best albums ever released, Transatlanticism, with a tour. A performance was scheduled in the MVP Arena, home of the Albany Firebirds, Albany, NY. I purchased 2 tickets, because I'm a geriatric millennial and that's the law. Dan was keen to go with me, and assumed we would drive. But I really wanted to take the train, and pointed out that roundtrip Amtrak tickets between Poughkeepsie and Not-Albany-Rensselaer were about $45, and it takes the same amount of time. Y'all, my husband of 12 years loves me very much and spoils me. So he said sure, okay, let's take the train; and it was a GLORIOUS train ride! I savored the feeling of absolute calm: no cars, no big-rig trucks, comfortable seats, reading a book. Dan napped! 

    But when we arrived at the station that joyous momentum hit a traffic jam of its own.

    You see, there's not a goddamn useful thing for travelers around this station; all the hotels are 3 miles away on a New York highway. So, if you booked a hotel room, like I did because I'm a geriatric millennial, but you didn't bring your car on the train it's necessary to pay for a taxi ($20) or an uber ($12, which one do you think I went with?). I have to say, some of the most interesting Uber rides I've ever had in my life were in the Albany area; shout out to the driver communing with dead people as we were crossing the Hudson River! There's no café, coffee house, diner, bakery, delicatessen, fancy restaurant, ice cream shop, tavern, bookshop, pharmacy, newspaper stand, and definitely no concert venue, or theater within walking distance of this station. Passengers arriving to Not-Albany-Rensselaer are stranded in a desert of a parking lot.

    All the things that might entice a visitor to come up to Albany via train is in, well, Albany. But the train station, as I keep pointing out, is not.

    The Amtrak train station that services the capitol city of New York State is in a city across the Hudson River called Rensselaer. 

It wasn't always like this. 

    I won't go into the history of the decision to move the train station across the river, because other people have done it before, and better. The Too Long; Didn't Read summation is that there was a perfect alignment of events:

    Penn RR and NY Central RR merging to stave off bankruptcy due to decline in passenger revenue, as a result of an increase in private vehicle ownership, not subtly encouraged by Eisenhower's enormous Interstate project, and an inconvenient (to the interstate running along the river side of Albany) railroad bridge crossing the Hudson River that was in need of repair and of course everyone wanted to spend the money on the interstate instead sealed the fate of the station.

    By an astonishing act of mercy, the building still stands in Albany.

Times Union: Churchill: A Glorious Building, Offloaded For a Sadly Bargain Price

Times Union: Churchill: A glorious building, offloaded for a sadly bargain price

Churchill: A glorious building, offloaded for a sadly bargain price

    It is a glorious palace to transportation. If this building were in any city in Europe you would take pictures for social media during your holiday: there's you drinking a latté at a café table, surround by the wrought iron bannisters and marble columns, and here's one of you selecting patisserie, or a sandwich to eat on your train ride departing from the train station. Except it's in (sotto vocce: kinda unremarkable) Albany. 

    Being deprived of its purpose, the space is now a white elephant for the Excelsior City. At one point it was property of a school in SUNY Albany, with the intent to serve as an incubator space for startup tech businesses, but that, obviously, didn't pan out. It has served as an event space, and now has offices in its grand halls. Ugh.

    In 2023, Chris Churchill writing for the Albany Times Union asked, halfway through his piece on the sale of the building, "maybe we could turn it back into a train station. How much would that cost?"

    Go off! Ask the important questions! Because restoring it to the original use, would be most beneficial for the edifice and the city of Albany, coincidentally observed earlier in the article, "Like the city, Kiernan (as the building was named in 2023) is beautiful and full of potential that seems forever unrealized."

    You want to know the worst part about this relocation of the station?

Passenger rail still goes through Albany! That's right! The train still has to cross the river to go West for at least 3 of the passenger services Amtrak operates. They just moved the bridge a little farther North.

    Americans actually enjoy train travel and use it when available. As evidence I present the restored Amtrak service from Mobile AL to New Orleans LA. This route had to be halted after Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago. Now called the Mardi Gras route, Amtrak has found that seats sell out, especially during weekends when the New Orleans Saints football team is playing a home game. Cristina Micelli writing for TheTravel.com points out that this isn't surprising: The stadium is a 15 minute walk from the station.

    And thus we neatly return back to my point at the very beginning of this post: 

It is important to plan for the land use around infrastructure.

    If you must move your train station, then you should also think about what's going on around said train station for arriving travelers, and visitors.

   In the golden days of American passenger rail entrepreneurs were well aware of the success of placing their business right where people arrived. The success of America's first restaurant chain, Harvey Houses, was inextricably linked to placement in, or near, train stations. 

    Fred Harvey, the founder, observed a need for quality dining options at train stations while working as a freight operator for the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincey Railroad company. This was before rail lines included a dining car, and the only food available to passengers were from road houses that were really hit or miss. From the success of his idea also sprouted a tourism industry encouraging people to explore the South West of America, where his Harvey Houses were concentrated. He's also credited with originating the phrase "Blue plate special," by serving a low-priced complete meal on blue patterned china. Harvey Houses were staffed by unmarried women, who were paid a salary equivalent of $624/month. 

Providing the inspiration for one of my most nostalgic movie memories

    This doesn't sound like much but they were also provided with room and board, so they had no rent and no grocery bills to pay. This did, of course, come with very strict personal restrictions like a 10pm curfew, and rules forbidding Harvey Girls to wear makeup or chew gum. Today I'm sure they wouldn't be allowed to dye their hair an unnatural colour, or have visible tattoos. The first depot stop opened in 1876, and the chain continued successfully up until its purchase by Amfac Inc. in 1968.

    I wish to God the spirit of Fred Harvey was reincarnated to other ambitious, energetic, and exacting persons in the 20th and 21st centuries, overturning restrictive and exclusionary zoning codes with the same rage that Fred overturned poorly set tables. 

    I wish, in the 1960's when Amtrak feebly rose from the ashes of Penn RR and NY Central RR, there was someone to say, "okay, if we're going to do this, then we're going to do it. We're going to build up this area of Rensselaer to provide everything a passenger arriving at this station could ever need, and we can do it, because we have all this land."

    Instead they saw all this land and said:

PARKING LOTS

    When it comes to the notion of eliminating parking lots someone's out there ready with a "whataboutthedisabled????" 

    I want to be careful and not speak for people with mobility needs, and different capabilities. That being said, if the only time this population enters the conversation is when there's a timid suggestion of minimizing parking space, then we are not seriously considering their needs. When I broke my ankle I couldn't drive; a bus at a bus shelter with a bench would have been more useful to me than a blue parking spot. In that context, I wonder what would be of greater benefit to someone who, for a wide variety of reasons that are visible to us and also invisible, needs help getting around: a no-man's land of a parking lot to cross before getting to anything useful, or the useful amenity being placed within their reach? 

    

    For the past year this issue is largely academic. But that's about to change: Kathy Hochul, Governor of New York State, has announced that the Metro North Rail service will be extending its route to Albany-Rensselaer. This will be a daily round-trip service, with ticket prices set at $38 one way. This is a big deal, as it's supplementing the Amtrak service. Even though Amtrak, with its daylight robbery  dynamic pricing system setting ticket costs at more than $100, those trains are frequently sold out. 

    

    These 2 cities need to figure some things out, and they need to figure them out RIGHT NOW: 

• How will passengers arriving to Rensselaer easily, and cheaply, get across the river to Albany?
• How will Rensselaer keep them in Rensselaer to collect that sweet sweet sales tax as they spend their tourism dollars?

    Because when they figure out the answers, like they should have 60 years ago, the potential for both communities will finally be unlocked.