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With no more bar cars, where will I, Flintlock, Jersey, MEGA, Rajiv, GRG55, RAZ and the rest of the iTulip boyz, find a repast after a heavy day of postings?
One for the Road? Bar Cars May Face a Last Call
One for the Road? Bar Cars May Face a Last Call
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
The cocktails started early, before the train left Manhattan, and by 6 p.m. most of the passengers were already on the second round. Tiny vodka bottles and punched ticket stubs littered the floor. A game of dice by the bar was getting rowdy as a couple canoodled in the corner, beers in hand.
The bar car is a mainstay of the commuting life, a lurching lounge on wheels inseparable from the suburbia of Cheever and “Mad Men.” “The commute is so bad as it is,” explained Paul Hornung, a financial worker, as he sipped a Stella Artois. “This is the one thing you can look forward to.”
But perhaps not for long.
Having survived numerous attempts at prohibition and outlasted its brethren in the suburbs of Chicago and New Jersey, the bar car out of Grand Central Terminal is now facing its gravest threat: the great recession.
A new fleet of cars will soon replace the 1970s-era models now used by commuters on the Metro-North Railroad line heading to Connecticut. But with money tight, railroad officials said they could not yet commit themselves to a fresh set of bar cars, citing higher costs for the cars’ custom design.
“They’re being contemplated,” said Joseph F. Marie, Connecticut’s commissioner of transportation. “But we have not made any final decisions.”
Defenders of the boozy commute say it helps raise revenue: After expenses, bar cars and platform vendors made $1.5 million last year, up from $1.3 million in 2008. (Officials would not say if a bar car makes more money than a car with the normal number of seats.) So far, 300 new train cars have been purchased, featuring airline-style headrests and graceful luggage racks. But officials say the bar cars remain a low priority, and may not be ordered.
“A decision was made early on that more seats on the trains was our top priority and that bar cars — as popular as they are — could wait,” said Judd Everhart, a spokesman for Connecticut’s department of transportation, which operates New Haven Line trains in conjunction with Metro-North. “It was about that simple.”
The existing bar cars, much beloved for their homey wood paneling, cannot be operated with the new fleet, which is expected to be phased in starting at the end of this year.
That prospect did not go down well with the regulars on a recent weekday ride to Bridgeport.
The bar car is a mainstay of the commuting life, a lurching lounge on wheels inseparable from the suburbia of Cheever and “Mad Men.” “The commute is so bad as it is,” explained Paul Hornung, a financial worker, as he sipped a Stella Artois. “This is the one thing you can look forward to.”
But perhaps not for long.
Having survived numerous attempts at prohibition and outlasted its brethren in the suburbs of Chicago and New Jersey, the bar car out of Grand Central Terminal is now facing its gravest threat: the great recession.
A new fleet of cars will soon replace the 1970s-era models now used by commuters on the Metro-North Railroad line heading to Connecticut. But with money tight, railroad officials said they could not yet commit themselves to a fresh set of bar cars, citing higher costs for the cars’ custom design.
“They’re being contemplated,” said Joseph F. Marie, Connecticut’s commissioner of transportation. “But we have not made any final decisions.”
Defenders of the boozy commute say it helps raise revenue: After expenses, bar cars and platform vendors made $1.5 million last year, up from $1.3 million in 2008. (Officials would not say if a bar car makes more money than a car with the normal number of seats.) So far, 300 new train cars have been purchased, featuring airline-style headrests and graceful luggage racks. But officials say the bar cars remain a low priority, and may not be ordered.
“A decision was made early on that more seats on the trains was our top priority and that bar cars — as popular as they are — could wait,” said Judd Everhart, a spokesman for Connecticut’s department of transportation, which operates New Haven Line trains in conjunction with Metro-North. “It was about that simple.”
The existing bar cars, much beloved for their homey wood paneling, cannot be operated with the new fleet, which is expected to be phased in starting at the end of this year.
That prospect did not go down well with the regulars on a recent weekday ride to Bridgeport.
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