Big Apple Bound: Is Getting There Half the Fun?

Once upon a time, like last year, if you had to get from Washington to New York, you went by plane if you had big money, by train if you had plenty of time, by car if you had a deep personal need for masochistic experiences, and by bus if you had nothing at all.

Now, everything has changed. Amtrak's new Acela Express train travels nonstop between Union and Penn stations in 2 hours 28 minutes, almost half an hour off the former rail champion, the Metroliner. And the E-ZPass -- the plastic transponder you attach to your windshield so you can speed through toll booths while guffawing at suckers waiting in endless lines -- slices a good 20 minutes off the drive, and much more on trying holiday weekends. Imagine: Better living through technology!

To test the new world of East Coast Metroplex commuting, The Post sent four reasonably willing reporters to New York, by US Airways shuttle (Peter Carlson), Acela Express (Steve Hendrix), car (Marc Fisher) and Peter Pan bus (Gary Lee). The race commenced in pitch darkness at 6:15 on a weekday morning at the Post building in downtown Washington and ended at the paper's New York bureau on West 57th Street.

We were under no illusions that this was an even race. Clearly, planes move faster than buses; even newspaper reporters understood that much. But the hype artists at Amtrak argue that in a door-to-door matchup, Acela is competitive with the air shuttles. And at least one of us strongly believed that a nonstop driver could beat the train and, with a boost from some of those patented LaGuardia Airport "volume delays," perhaps even the plane. As for the bus, well, it's cheap.

So who won?

We could focus on the horse race, but that would be wrong. In fact, what we had here was really a test of four modes for speed, comfort and overall satisfaction.

The only way he could lose, he figured, would be to miss the 7 a.m. shuttle, which, as he stood in the pre-dawn drizzle trying to hail a cab, began to seem fairly likely. There weren't many cabs on 15th Street at 6:15 in the morning -- or at 6:20, or 6:25. Several drove right past him, but one finally stopped and Air Man made it to the US Airways shuttle building by 6:40, whereupon he made like O.J. to the gate.

The plane landed right on time at 8. After a long, slow taxi to the terminal, we arrived at 8:08. I did another mad dash out of the airport and hopped into a cab at 8:15. As soon as my butt hit the seat, the meter read $2.00. Welcome to New York!

The cab lurched through traffic, arriving on 57th Street at 8:40, whereupon we crept, we crawled. Finally, at 8:53, I paid the cabby $24 and jumped out at Sixth Avenue, hoofing the last block to The Post's bureau, arriving at 8:57.

Elapsed time: 2 hours 42 minutes.

Train Man almost missed the Acela because he stayed at the Post building to gloat over Air Man helplessly flailing his arms at taxis. But at 6:20, Train Man jogged over to the Farragut North Metro station, made his way to Union Station and hit the platform with four minutes to spare.

Train Man reports that the Acela may look like a toppled rocket, but at precisely 6:50, it took off more like a royal sedan chair, a slow smooth rollout into the rain with nary a herk or a jerk. By 7:05, we had cleared the D.C. clutter and were clacking along at speed. I got up for train travel's greatest luxury: a walk.