People populated nearly every row in one coach car: an elderly couple talking softly, a husband sleeping with earphones on while his wife read in the seat next to him, and a pigtailed girl who ran up the aisle every now and then, looking at passengers before dashing back to her mother.

One of those passengers was Nicole Singleton. The Battle Creek resident boarded in Niles. She was visiting friends and is taking the train home. She doesn't have a car, but even if she did, she wouldn't use it to make the trip.

"It'd cost three times as much," she said.

The train is faster than the bus and cheaper than a car, Singleton said, although she found her rear-facing seat a little strange on the trip down to Niles.

"I've never traveled backward before," she said.

More and more people are doing the math and realizing that in some cases, hopping a train is cheaper than hopping into their sedans or SUVs.

And that's the impetus behind Bayh's push for more funding for Amtrak and other rail services.

Bayh wants $1.9 billion steered toward the national rail carrier - a 36 percent increase from last year's $1.3 billion. Doing so, he said, would give more people the chance to avoid higher fuel prices and help conserve gasoline, which could both ease demand and help the environment.

The package Bayh was pushing included $1 billion for capital improvements to the system, $600 million for operating money and $302 million for debt repayment.