Matching a rental agency’s hours of operation with expected train arrivals and departures is essential, but which company should you call? In an attempt to answer that question for every station, Trains has obtained a list of available car rental options that Amtrak call center personnel use when giving advice to passengers – current as of July 15, 2010. See the PDF at the bottom of this story.
A few caveats about this list: Not all of the information has been checked for accuracy; some calls to the phone numbers provided with the original data were not returned and others were disconnected – not a good sign. Over breakfast on the City of New Orleans in August, I talked to a man who rented from Enterprise at Greenwood, Miss., a stop that the table provided by Amtrak showed as having no rental car availability, so that information has been incorporated. The list also does not include Amtrak Thruway bus stop information (available from agents at 1-800-USA-RAIL) or airports with train stations served by solely by non-Amtrak commuter rail operators that might offer more convenience and longer hours of operation than the Amtrak locations listed. Some examples:
Airport Commuter Carrier Access
Dallas-Ft. Worth Trinity Rail Express Shuttle
Ft. Lauderdale Tri-Rail Shuttle
Miami Tri-Rail Shuttle
Philadelphia SEPTA At airport
San Francisco Caltrain Shuttle
South Bend NICTD (South Shore) At airport
San Francisco International also hosts a leg of the BART system, which connects with Amtrak north of Emeryville at Richmond, Calif. Other airports served directly by heavy or light rail transit include Atlanta’s Hartsfield, Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway, Cleveland’s Hopkins, Portland International (Ore.), Sea-Tac between Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, D.C.’s Reagan (in Alexandria, Va.), Lambert International in St. Louis, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Vancouver (B.C.), and New York’s JFK.
Amtrak’s agreement with Hertz was established in 1997, and today that company offers 72 locations where train travelers can rent cars – many of them with counters and parking lots at train stations. Its preferred status entitles Hertz to be linked to www.amtrak.com; however, if Hertz doesn’t have a location in a particular city the site does not display other options even if they are shown to be available on the call center’s list. Other Amtrak Guest Rewards partners are Enterprise, Budget, and Zipcar, a company whose members (who usually don’t own a car) pay a yearly membership fee and can rent cars by the hour subject to availability with minimal advance notice. VIA Rail Canada recently established a marketing relationship with Communauto, a similar operation based in the province of Quebec.
There are also some good alternatives, such as Dragonfly Express, which rents out two electric cars at the Santa Fe, N.M., Rail Runner commuter rail station (also served by Amtrak’s bus shuttle from nearby Lamy, N.M.).
Dragonfly manager Anna Deardorff explains that the company has been in business for less than two years, and rents cars by the hour or the day. “We’re very small, but our owners Warren Buck and Trish Burnett are committed to Santa Fe and run a very green and eco-friendly operation,” Deardorff said in a telephone interview. Dragonfly’s central location is more convenient for arriving and departing passengers than Hertz, with an office at a downtown hotel, or Budget and Enterprise, located several miles away on Cerrillos Road, and especially Avis, whose only outlet is at the airport way out of town.
Entrepreneurs at locations like the Champaign, Ill., transportation center are studying the launch of a similar arrangement. Others have set up bicycle rentals. If there are personal transportation options in a town near you that are not shown on the list that follows, let us know at railroadeditor@trains.com and we’ll incorporate the information in a future revision.
About the table:
Stations are shown as staffed (Y) or unstaffed (N), but some staffed stations are not open at all hours or days of the week, such as Newton, Kan., which may also be closed on the weekends and at other times if a vacation slot can’t be filled. There may be a formal or informal arrangement with one of the rental car companies for cars to be dropped or picked up at a staffed station when the rental counter is closed, but it is best to check such details with the car rental company’s local office, especially if the reservation is made on-line or with a nationwide toll-free number.
Stations that show (N) for no rental cars available may actually have such options that just didn’t make Amtrak’s list. This is especially true with suburban stops near metropolitan areas, such as Royal Oak, Mich., and Framingham, Mass., where there are numerous local outlets of the major chains.
We have not shown all the car rental options at cities where at least one or two companies have either cars at or adjacent to the train station, will pick up and drop off, have a courtesy phone to the rental office, and/or offer taxi reimbursement. If none of these are offered, Amtrak Guest Reward partners Hertz, Budget, and Enterprise are shown if they do business in the city. Even if pick-up or reimbursement isn’t indicated, that doesn’t mean the renter won’t make an arrangement in advance to do so.
Generally, companies that don’t pick-up or reimburse are located out of town at the airport. They aren’t interested in railroad passengers so it’s only natural that we should return the favor! However, individual situations may vary, so a phone call may yield more cooperation. Again, calling ahead is essential.
To read more about car rental agencies at Amtrak stations, see the October 2010 issue of Trains magazine!
St Louis Station – Budget Rental location shows it is closing as of 3/20/2017.