WASHINGTON — Had gas been selling for, say, $2 a gallon, Bob Behr would not have been at historic Union Station last week waiting to board the Charlotte, N.C.-bound train for a six-hour train ride home.

But with gas nearing $4 a gallon, Behr, his wife, Susan, and their next-door neighbors, Sharon and Mike Powell, had decided to take Amtrak. The total round-trip fare for the four friends from Asheboro, N.C., was $307, said Bob Behr. Behr said he compared the price of train travel with the price of driving — at least $150 in gas, $28 a day parking at the hotel, the aggravation of dealing with traffic around the nation’s capital — and the railway won out over the interstate. Cheaper gas would have swayed him the other way.

“For a first-time train rider, it was a unique experience,” said Sharon Powell, who marveled at the wide seats in coach, meals in the dining car, the absence of airport hassles at the depot and “no anxiety” for the rail trip.

“It reminded you of the ’50s,” she said.

Rising gas prices are contributing to a surge in train travel with ridership reaching record levels.

“We’ll probably crack 27 million this year” in riders, said Alexander Kummant, president and CEO of Amtrak, officially the National Railroad Passengers Corp. and operator of the trains that carry riders between the nation’s cities. That 27 million is up from last year’s record of 25.8 million passengers.

Vacation travel on Amtrak is up 28 percent over the same period last year, said Cliff Black, Amtrak’s chief of corporate communications.

With gas prices high and apparently headed higher, “there’s no doubt people out there are looking for other transportation choices,” Kummant said.

Swearing off air travel

Ed and Edna Dout, of Chickamauga, Ga., chose to take the train that runs from New Orleans through Atlanta to New York City and then board one of Amtrak’s high-speed Acela trains on the northeast corridor to visit their daughter and son-in-law, who live in Boston. Their choice was only indirectly tied to high fuel prices since they took the train after tiring of what they deemed shoddy airline service. High costs of jet fuel have forced air carriers to cut back on flights and amenities. Full planes and fewer flights translate to longer delays.

“Flying got to be too much of a hassle,” said Ed. Last year, their plane was late leaving the airport in Chattanooga, Tenn., and they missed a connection in New York’s LaGuardia so they sat there for seven hours and eventually took 16 hours to reach Boston.

They swore off air travel. At Union Station, they awaited the final leg of their return trip — a night in a sleeper on an overnight train to Georgia.

Nathaniel Henderson said he took the train because flying was too expensive and the price of gas is so high that he decided not to drive to visit family members in Greenwood, S.C. However, his round-trip ticket cost $280. As with airline tickets, train fares can be lower when reserved and purchased earlier.

“Nothing is cheap these days,” lamented Henderson, who lives in Washington, D.C.

Requesting funds

Indeed, the flip side to high gas prices turning motorists into train passengers is that fuel prices are up for Amtrak, too, Kummant noted. Despite the record ridership, the federally supported agency still lost money last year. Amtrak has requested $1.7 billion in federal funds for fiscal year 2009, about twice as much as proposed in the Bush administration budget. However, Congress could increase spending even more as gas prices further increase rail travel.

“We are at the cusp of a ‘renaissance’ for intercity passenger rail in this nation,” said Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Oberstar is author of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, which would raise the operating funds to $3 billion for the coming fiscal year in a five-year package of $14.4 billion for Amtrak and states to improve passenger rail travel between cities.

The increased train ridership “is certainly positive from the standpoint of getting the message through to policymakers in Washington to address the need for more” cars and engines, said Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers.

“Amtrak is pretty close to the limit on their equipment,” he said. The trend to rail travel “is going to be held back because so many trains are sold out.”

Most of Amtrak’s usable cars are in service, said Kummant. So the ability to just add cars to increase capacity is limited even as more Americans switch from cars to trains. The rising ridership is a strong argument that now is the time to procure new cars, he said.

27 million

riders are expected on Amtrak trains by the end of this year, breaking last year’s record of 25.8 million.