Hispanics make up half the population of California’s Central Valley. Los Angeles has 5 million Hispanics (9% of the nation’s population). And 23% of the Bay Area population is Hispanic. So why does Amtrak California struggle to attract Hispanic riders? Hispanic ridership on the San Joaquin service is only 20%.
Larry Miller, who served on the San Joaquin Valley Rail Committee, says there are several reasons. First of all, Amtrak has not done much marketing of its services in Spanish. He notes a recent “Companions Ride Free” promotion that had coupons printed only in English:
When I asked about the Spanish versions with coupons in Spanish, we were told that they had only printed these in English. At this point my elected counterpart, Fresno County Supervisor Judy Case, became upset, reminding them that roughly 70% of her constituents were Hispanic.
Amtrak complies with Homeland Security laws, instituted in the wake of 9-11, requiring riders to show government-issued photo identification — very much as airlines do. Amtrak diligently informs ticker buyers of this requirement, even though it intimidates prospective riders who are not legal residents and offends sympathetic friends and family who are legal residents.
This is yet another way that TSA security policies actually make us less safe. By discouraging train travel, it results in more car trips — and more road accidents. Larry Miller hopes that California’s new non-resident driver’s license law will help attract more Hispanic riders. That seems implausible. Travelers afraid of getting deported aren’t going to submit travel plans to a government-run train service. Not when they hear news stories of VIPR and ICE patrols on buses and trains.
Systemic Failure 
Airport level security checks on trains remind me of applying all the automobile rules of the road to bicycles. Are we as a nation so dumb that we cant tell one thing from another?
But… but… we have to be sure that nobody can hijack a train and drive it into a building!
I got screwed by this once, took out my license to buy my ticket online, left the license sitting next to my computer. Drove with my sweety down to Fresno to leave her there for the week, when the time came for me to train back I realized I didn’t have my license and was told I couldn’t Amtrak. So I drove back home (sans license), and then drove back down the next week. 400 miles of driving because security theater wanted to make our lives that less simple. Morons.
One of many things that make it simpler to just plan on Amtrak not being a solution to my travel needs (distance to rental cars from Fresno station being another one…).
[…] blog Systemic Failure ought to write a book about how federal regulations undermine train travel in the U.S. It would be […]
[…] blog Systemic Failure ought to write a book about how federal regulations undermine train travel in the U.S. It would be […]
Someone explain to me how a conductor looking at an id does anything. Do they have a database in their brain of every criminal…?
Reality:
“ID Please. Ah yes, your name is James. You are not a threat, because I now know your name is James”
Does anybody besides me think it more than a little condescending and insulting that we’re assuming Latinos don’t ride trains because we think they’re all illegals?
And yes, TSA has their ID requirements, but anybody who rides Amtrak (both Federal and California) knows requirement is observed more in the breach.
@Richard, according to wiki, 7.3% of the state pop is undocumented, which is probably over 10% in a county like Fresno. Lets assume theyre all hispanic. Fresno county is 50% hispanic, meaning around 93,000 hispanic illegal aliens out of 465,000 total hispanics. In many families, the parents are undocumented, but the kids are citizens, however the id requirement means none of them take amtrak. So if youre excluding 150,000-200,000 people due to the ID requirement, in a county with 930,000, thats huge.
Of course, low income is another reason for the lower ridership. Amtrak is very white. Try one of the many bus lines (there are 5-10) that cross the state and terminate in Tijuana, and note theyre 99% hispanic.
The ID check issue is hogwash since Matricula Consular cards are considered valid ID, as are passports. It says so right on the Amtrak web page.
Official government-issued identification (federal, state or county government or foreign government)
I know Larry Miller personally, on this issue his intentions are good, but there are a lot more Latinos on the train than he believes (some of them may not identify as Latino because they may only be partially such or are multi-generational) and that, since Latino families are bigger than other ethnic groups (a demographic fact), it costs more to transport, say a family of five on the train than just putting them in a car. IDs are irregularly checked, more so now with e-ticketing (where the computer can randomly select passengers for an ID check) than in the past, but Amtrak procedure is to not throw people off the train at the next stop if they do not have ID. And, again, a passport, matricula consular card, or county government ID card (like San Francisco’s non-citizen ID) work.
The more embedded illegal immigrants need their matricula cards to get bank accounts, library cards, or other services. And they work just fine on Amtrak, and to use the ID issue as the primary or even a secondary reason “why Latinos don’t use the train” is BS in my opinion. First and second generation Latinos, like most immigrants, generally prefer services delivered to them in their language and with people of their culture when possible. Are we going to complain that Latinos don’t shop at Vons and Albertsons instead of El Super and Vallarta too? How many Latinos use Greyhound over Transportes Intercalifornias? Are we going to handwring that Asians, Blacks, and Whites don’t shop at Vallarta and don’t use Transportes Intercalifornias?
Why the fuck do you presume that any sort of Identification Card is required to travel from one place to another within one state of the USA?
Stalin won the Cold War, for sure.
Trains have manifests like airplanes do, and in a train crash or terrorist incident, all of the passengers on the train need to be properly identified. The San Joaquin, in particular, is a reservation only train, but the manifest information is collected for all Amtrak trains upon ticket scanning. That’s why, and profanity isn’t going to change the issue.
Manifests? Good God. Do we have a winner for the most gullible human alive?
The TSA and the NSA want to track everyone in the US, Stalin-style, because they’re evil fascist creeps. There is no reason to do it other than evil and fascism, but as long as our government is run by evil fascist creeps, it’s going to be hard to fix.
@calwatch, thats incorrect, you can pay with cash on board the San Joaquin.