The Connecticut Rail Commuter Council has taken it upon itself to design the bar car of the future, and wants you to offer your input.

Here’s the design the advocacy group came up with, and the questionnaire that accompanies it.

You’ll recall that the Metro-North bar car may or may not go the way of the Suzuki Samurai when the railroad phases out the old cars on its New Haven Line later this year for the new M8s.

It’s noteworthy that the Commuter Council seems to have retired the phrase “bar car” for the more fey “cafe car.”

“Bar cars are an important part of many commuters’ lives,” says Commuter Council Vice Chair Terri Cronin of Norwalk.  “We want to be sure that, as [Connecticut Department of Transportation] moves forward seeking bids on new M8 bar cars, they do so with riders’ input.”

On the 7:05 New Haven train Friday, sitting next to a skinny Stamford student with a gleaming new iPad and white headphones drinking a Bud. 

Next to him, sitting alone, is a fat 35-year-old guy in a painted-on red and white striped polo shirt, dark blue chinos and a feathered 80’s haircut drinking a Big Gulp-sized Pepsi.  He’s easily taking up the seat space of three people. 

The fat chinos guy bragged earlier to nobody in particular that he had one of the carts at Grand Central top his Pepsi off with booze.

The bar car has been very quiet tonight — unusually so.  Nobody has said a word for about 20 minutes. 

Then I hear the fat guy laughing.

Now he’s really laughing.  And then he says, “He’s dreaming in Star Wars!” 

He’s watching the skinny Stamford kid’s iPad from three bench seats away, taking in Family Guy without the benefit of sound.

Laughing loudly just now, he said, “Dewey.  You gotta love Dewey.”

I know he’s talking about Stewie.

–Saugatucker

The Connecticut Metro-North Rail Commuter Council took issue with the NY Times story earlier this week that said bar cars on Metro-North were perhaps ringing that Last Call bell. The eight bar cars rolling on the New Haven Line these days will, in fact, fit right into the new M8 car lineup when it finally gets rolled out later this year, says Chairman Jim Cameron.

Though three members of the CT Rail Commuter Council worked with reporter Michael Grynbaum to get the story right, he ignored the facts in favor of a sexier story.
 
The reporter implied that when the new M8 cars arrive, the 8 existing bar cars would be replaced. Not so!  The 8 bar cars we have all have undergone recent rehab’s and can run for 10 - 15 more years.
 
He also implied that “the recession” might force a rethinking of plans to order new bar cars.
 
The Commuter Council, meeting last night, was reassured by both Metro-North and CT DOT that there are no plans to eliminate bar cars on Connecticut trains.  CDOT also told the Council they would share design concepts with us for new M8 bar cars, currently under bid from Kawasaki.
 
The issue of continued if not improved bar car service has been a priority of the Commuter Council for the 25 years of its existence.  We will continue that advocacy… and seek a correction from the NY Times for its sloppy reporting.
 
“Cheers!” concludes Cameron.

We’ll see who’s right when the new trains are launched.

Metro-North doesn’t seem to envision bar cars in its future, reports the NY Times, which says it looks unlikely those bygone-era relics will fit into the long-awaited rollout of the M8 cars on the New Haven Line last this year.

Much as I enjoy and respect the Times, I have to say–reporter Michael Grynbaum includes every last cliche about commuting to the suburbs in his story. Reference to Don Draper and Mad Men? Check. Reference to John Cheever’s short fiction? Check, mate. Weepy homages to bar car bonhomie?

He squeezes them all into one sentence, in fact:

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.”

Here’s my issue. Is the bar car really, truly a “mainstay of the commuting life”? Grynbaum notes in his story that bar cars have long since been phased out on Long Island Railroad and New Jersey Transit. They’ve also been phased out on the Hudson and Harlem Lines….assuming those lines ever had those stankin’ basement-bars-on-wheels.

[By the way, what the heck is Paul “Golden Boy” Hornung doing drinking on the train? to Stamford]

I don’t know that I’ve ever consumed a potent potable on Metro-North, and I, ya know, follow the intersection of commuter trains and booze pretty carefully. While bar cars are surely meeting spots for friends old and new to enjoy a tipple, I’m guessing most New Haven Line riders would prefer to quaff their Bud tallboy in a normal seat in a normal car, instead of on these anachronistic oddities.

Metro-North officials say the decision to possibly eliminate the bar cars is all about–surprise surprise–money.

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.”

We shared an earlier passage of Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day a few months back–which also had Babe Ruth drinking heavily on a train.

It’s a big ol’ 700-pager, but it’s interesting. Lehane of course does those Boston-based crime novels that so easily transfer to the big screen: Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island.

The Given Day is a little different. It’s World War I era-Boston, and the hale fellows of the Boston Police Department are hurtling towards a strike. The book shows Lehane writing in a fanciful style not seen in his previous books as he tells three separate, but ultimately intertwined stories: a Boston police captain’s black sheep son, Danny Coughlin, leading the BPD insurgency, a young black man, Luther Laurence, trying to get back to his young family after being forced to leave them in Tulsa, and Babe Ruth breaking from the Red Sox for his fateful marriage to the New York Yankees.

Babe has by far the smallest of the three men’s roles in the book, but it’s no less memorable.

This happens at the very end of the book, when the Babe has been jettisoned by the Sox.

On the train to New York, everyone was drunk. Even the porters.

Twelve in the afternoon and people were guzzling champagne and guzzling rye and a band played in the fourth car, and the band was drunk. No one sat in their seats. Everyone hugged and kissed and danced. Prohibition was now the law of the land. Enforcement would begin four days from now, on the sixteenth.

Babe Ruth had a private car on the train, and at first he tried to sit out the revelry. He read over a copy of the contract he’d officially sign at day’s end in the offices of the Colonels at the Polo Grounds. He was now a Yankee. The trade had been announced ten days ago, though Ruth had never seen it coming. Got drunk for two days to deal with the depression. Johnny Igoe found him, though, and sobered him up. Explained that Babe was now the highest paid player in baseball history. He showed him New York paper after New York paper, all proclaiming their joy, their ecstasy about getting the most feared slugger  in the game on their team.

“You already own the town, Babe, and you haven’t even arrived yet.”

That put a new perspective on things. Babe had feared that New York was too big, too loud, too wide. He’d get swallowed up in it. Now he realized the opposite was true–he was too big for Boston. Too loud. Too wide. It couldn’t hold him. It was too small, too provincial. New York was the only stage large enough for the Babe. New York and New York alone. It wasn’t going to swallow Babe. He was going to swallow it.

I am Babe Ruth. I am bigger and stronger and more popular than anyone. Anyone.

Some drunk woman bounced off his door and he heard her giggle, the sound alone giving him an erection.

What the hell was he doing back here alone when he could be out there with his public, jawing, signing autographs, giving them a story they’d tell their grandkids?

He left the room. He walked straight to the bar car, worked his way through the dancing drunks, one bird up on a table kicking her legs like she was working burlesque. He sidled up to the bar, ordered a double scotch.

“Why’d you leave us, Babe?”

He turned, looked at the drunk beside him, a short guy with a tall girlfriend, both of them three sheets to the wind.

“I didn’t leave,” Babe said. “Harry Frazee traded me. I had no say. I’m just a working stiff.”

“Then you’ll come back someday?” the guy said. “Play out your contract and come back to us?”

“Sure,” Babe lied. “That’s the idea, bub.”

The man patted him on the back. “Thanks, Mr. Ruth.”

“Thank you,” Ruth said with a wink for his girlfriend. He downed his drink and ordered another.

Metro-North is poised to hike up the price of a cocktail on both its bar cars and the carts stationed near the platforms in Grand Central. The railroad is “seeking approval from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board of directors to raise prices…to keep pace with inflation.”

Metro-North’s booze sales represented $607,000 in profit last year, approximately 63% of it from me.  Metro-North estimates it sells a million beers and 250,000 bags of chips in a year.

The MTA board will vote on the matter–a joint request between Metro-North and Long Islang Railroad–Wednesday, and the price hikes would go into effect May 8. Perhaps more daunting, the railroad is also “seeking authorization to raise prices each September at the rate of growth in the consumer price index… without seeking board approval.”   

The new price list would see a domestic beer jump from $2 to $2.50.  

Today’s Wall Street Journal laments the demise of the bar car (D4, Personal Journal). Rolling imbibers say it’s a crucial aspect of their social lives. The MTA says they’re scrapping them to make room for extra seating. I say keep the bar cars and add more regular cars to accommodate the extra ridership.

But who asked me?

Happy Hour on Rails May Sound Its Last Call

By Jennifer Saranow

For the past 20 years, Charles Lawrence has left his Manhattan office job in time for the New Haven line 6:04 p.m. or 8:04 p.m. train from Grand Central Terminal. There, the 50-year-old commercial real-estate broker from Fairfield, Conn., settles into the bar car, buys a beer and chats with other regulars.

Their latest topic of conversation isn’t just sports or business, but whether the train’s operator will eliminate the bar car itself. “It’s this sense of community that ties people together,” he says. “When there’s no bar, people will just disappear — take a seat and go home.”

…