Last week, I wondered which was a more agonizing mode of transportation this summer, car or plane. There must be a better way to travel, I wrote. And that was before Katrina kicked over our oil operation, closed airports and wrecked roads all over the Gulf Coast.

Several readers were quick to point out an egregious oversight. "Don't do your loyal readers a disservice by encouraging them to consider only two (bad) choices when there is an excellent third one!" e-mailed a Philadelphian, and a caller scolded me for not mentioning his favorite mode of long-haul travel.

Trains.

Or, more accurately in Pittsburgh, the train, because Amtrak runs exactly one train daily from here to New York, to Washington, D.C., and to Chicago.

At first I was disappointed in myself for forgetting about the rail option. I am a huge fan of trains.

I grew up riding commuter trains in suburban Philadelphia, and as a student and adult, I have ridden trains in foreign countries where gasoline was never particularly cheap and rail is still taken seriously.

I've taken an overnight train from Helsinki to Moscow, a ride through the snow across Norway, a bullet train from Tokyo to Nagoya, a British line across the top of Wales from Anglesey and the TGV from Paris to Avignon.

The only part I really didn't enjoy was that when I went to Moscow, it was 1982, and we were awakened before dawn so Soviet guards could poke through our subversive capitalist underwear.

As for Amtrak, it was my principal transportation for visits home from college. But that was along the Northeast Corridor, where service is frequent. If I were a student now at, say, Pitt, and my home was in, say, Lancaster County or Rockville, Md., there is no way I would rise at the required ungodly hour to catch the one train home.

Fortunately for students, American parents live to chauffeur young scholars hundreds of miles a dozen times a year. With limited intercity rail, what choice do they have? Where's Pittsburgh's passenger rail link to Erie? To Washington, Pa.? To Columbus or Cincinnati? Should we, maybe, have thought about this before gas hit $3 a gallon?

Let's look at the service we do have. We have one train daily to Philadelphia and New York. It leaves at 7:25 a.m. and arrives in New York more than nine hours later. (The Sunday train leaves at 1:20 p.m. and gets to Penn Station a little before 11, so it's a good thing New York is the city that never sleeps.)

The trip between Pittsburgh and my old hometown of Paoli takes seven hours. You can drive it in five, 5 1/2 if you consume liquids.

A flight to Philadelphia takes less than an hour, to New York a little longer, and if you look for a deal or fly a discount airline, the round-trip fare can be about the same as the train's, about $150.

We have one train daily to Chicago. (The aptly named Capitol Limited stops in Pittsburgh as it goes between Chicago and Washington.) It leaves at 11:45 p.m. and arrives nine hours and 40 minutes later, at 8:25 a.m. The return train leaves Chicago at 5:35 p.m. and arrives in Pittsburgh at 4:05 a.m. Wakey, wakey! Which of your lucky friends wants to pick you up?

The fare is under $200 round trip, but only if you sleep in a coach seat; if you want to lie down, you'll spend an extra $100 each way.

(You don't want to drive to Chicago. It saves only a couple of hours over the train, and there are few experiences as mind-numbing as driving across Ohio.)

Finally, we have one train daily to Washington, D.C. The round-trip fare is less than $100. But the trip takes more than 7 1/2 hours each way, when you can drive it in 4 1/2. That said, when you get to Washington, you will be much happier without a car.

But the train leaves at 4:15 a.m. Not exactly a civilized hour.

I don't want to pile on Amtrak; I have nothing but sympathy for an agency trying to do something worthwhile in an environment that ranges from indifferent to hostile.

But we need to get serious about intercity rail in this country. It's generally comfortable and affordable; it should also be reliable and much, much faster. (Maglev?) If it were more convenient, more people would turn out to ride it.

Now that air travel is an ordeal and car travel is a luxury, our attitude that mass transit is only for people whose time isn't valuable has got to go.