In a previous post, I was down on the St. Louis train station. I made another visit this past weekend and I am not enamored with it. But it is still has a few things going for it:
- Most train stations do not have Pizza Hut and KFC in them. Although not the healthiest food, but chains serve yummy treats you can eat with your fingers.
- There are two sets of rest rooms. The one on the way to the Amtrak tracks are better.
- It is a brief walk to the Civic Center Metro stop which you can see from the train station.
- Long-term parking is only $6/day at a lot one block away. Short-term parking (no matter how short) is $1/hour and is adjacent to the station
- There were three taxis waiting to pick up passengers. At most stations you have to phone a taxi.
- The Marriott Union Station (in the true St. Louis train station) is only a few blocks away.
- The intercity buses leave from the same station as Amtrak
The last point should be considered further. Those of us who live in Chicago revel in the idea that our hometown is the center of the railroad universe (at least in the United States.) That is great news for Amtrak riders wanting to begin or end their journey in the City of Big Shoulders. But I can imagine that there are those who want to travel on the train between two places and not have to spend the extra time being transported to Chicago and waiting to change trains there. For those traveling between locations in the west and south, St. Louis and its ease in changing from train to bus or vice versa may be the answer. For instance:
- You wish to go from Kansas City to New Orleans. You could go to Chicago and connect to the City of New Orleans. With connecting time, that will take 32 hours. Or you can take the train to St. Louis, ride the Amtrak Thruway Bus Service provided by Vandalia Bus Company to Carbondale, IL and catch the City of New Orleans at Carbondale. That takes only a little less than 24 hours.
- You are a college student in Texas or Arkansas and you want to visit a friend at the University of Illinois-Champaign. You could take the Texas Eagle all the way to Chicago and change to the Illini to come back down to Champaign. Or you could get off the Texas Eagle in St. Louis and transfer to the Greyhound Champaign Express. You will save at least four hours by doing so.
- Other Amtrak cities such as Omaha and Indianapolis may be better reached by connecting with a bus service in St. Louis than traveling through Chicago.
- And then there are places you can't get to on Amtrak. Like Tulsa, OK. If you are coming from the east, you can get on a Lincoln Service train leaving Chicago at 7:00 pm and arriving in St. Louis at 12:30 am. You can then switch to a Greyhound bus and less than eight hours later have breakfast in Tulsa. This also works for travel to Nashville and Columbus.
You can find connecting bus service from St. Louis by going to the
Greyhound website.
