Letters

n May, Gen. Monty Montero, commander of the Military Traffic Management Command, went to Durres, Albania, to visit some of his uniformed and civilian employees. It wasn't your typical government business trip, even by Defense Department standards. He spent four and a half hours each way on a high-speed ferry packed with Albanians and relief workers.

"There were lots of bags-people were carrying their life's belongings. You could see the excitement in their eyes," says Montero. "Normally I don't do well with crying kids, but it was OK. And on the way back there were lots of relief workers singing songs in different languages."

Planes do fly to Albania, Montero points out, but he needed to be at the port, and the airport is one to two hours away from it. Also, the ferry is "how a lot of our people [get there], and I wanted to experience that," he says.

It's thinking like that that gets government travelers out of the air and onto the ground-or in Montero's case, the water. The vast majority of federal travel is by plane. Still, for various reasons a traveler may decide there's a better way to go. Some, like Montero, are headed for a site far enough from the airport that flying doesn't make sense. Some need a car so they can make intermediate stops. Some believe the train is a saner and more reliable way to get where they're going. And for a few, fear of flying rules out getting airborne.

Each method has its pluses and minuses, costs and benefits. In most cases, travel regulations allow travelers to choose the method that makes the most sense for their trip. "We want to support people doing the smartest thing," says Becky Rhodes, who is in charge of travel at the General Services Administration's Office of Governmentwide Policy.

Cars

Leesha Galery, MTMC traffic management specialist, believes in driving. Of course, she does manage the federal car rental program contract. Under the agreement, government employees get insurance coverage and unlimited mileage. Thirty-six companies, including the big names-National, Avis, Dollar, Hertz, Budget, Alamo, Enterprise and Thrifty-are signed onto the contract, but not all of their locations participate. (All of Thrifty and Enterprise's locations within the continental United States do.)

Most cars rented for the government are used at the traveler's destination, but the number of people who rent a car to drive point to point "has been increasing as people try to save travel funds," says Galery. "The number is small, but it is increasing."

She has some words of wisdom for federal travelers who drive rental cars: "Remember, this is a government program, and should only be used for official business. Any detour to grandma's house or Six Flags is not authorized."

Trains

The train is a favored way for East Coast feds to get around the Mid-Atlantic. The government spent more than $2 million on the train in 1996, the last year for which figures are available. Things will be shaking up on that route when Amtrak introduces its Acela train this fall.

The new high-speed train, Acela Express, will shave an estimated half-hour off the three-hour travel time between Washington and New York. Times to Boston will be shortened even more. The line will be chock-full of business travelers' favorite amenities as Amtrak competes head to head with the airline shuttles. The company even sets its prices as a percentage of the shuttle fares (though the government city-pair airline rates make flying the much cheaper way to go).

The Metroliner will be renamed Acela Regional and will pick up speed between New York and Boston because the tracks have been electrified. Already, more than 94 percent of Metroliners arrive within 10 minutes of schedule.

New York, New York

Say you work in D.C. and need to go to New York, a common route-feds traveled it more than 27,000 times in fiscal 1998 by plane alone. How do you decide the best method of transport?

You can look at the measurable variables, like the cost in time and money. And then you have to consider the intangibles. Like New York Federal Executive Board Executive Director Susan Kossin, many feds are big train boosters.

"A lot of us [in New York] take the Metroliner, especially to D.C. It costs more, but it's more comfortable and reliable. When you factor in the time and cost of getting to the airport, it's worth it," says Kossin.

"The shuttle is incredibly cheap. But you have to figure in air-traffic delays, fogged-in delays, rained-in delays, thunderstormed-in delays. . . . I've gotten home to New York after a meeting [via train] when there was not a single plane flying."

Travelers arriving at New York's Penn Station, Boston's Back Bay or D.C.'s Union Station also bypass rush-hour traffic that airport users must wrestle with to get into the city. "Let's say you catch the 7 a.m. shuttle (which a lot of government travelers do)," says Robert Scoles of SATO Travel. "You get into LaGuardia at 8, and you get caught on the bridges to Manhattan at the same time everyone from Long Island does."