pavyedav | boredom and inherent curiosity, in one

A lot of my friends and family know that I love trains. The train is one of the coolest modes of transportation because you can travel at high speeds while still staying on the ground. They are also much more spacious than airplanes. I remember thinking while in Europe that the U.S. should have a more extensive rail system. They are so convenient and punctual.

Sadly, ours is a car-crazy nation with very little rail infrastructure, particularly track that is reinforced for future technology. I know there are a few things hindering the deployment of large scale railroads:

1.) Money to Deploy - Obviously, it will take billions and billions of dollars to lay down track and have futuristic trains built. Right now, it is difficult to justify spending taxpayer money to do so when there are other viable transportation options from city to city. Amtrak is struggling to stay afloat, but I contend that the reason for that is because it is not more convenient given that they are so slow and outdated, not that people don’t like the train.

2.) Time - If we’re talking about policy right now, it probably won’t get into the execution stage until 2030. These initiatives should have been introduced decades ago (which they might have), but policymakers refuse to support such grand projects when we are struggling to make ends meet as a country. Various projects, such as Ohio Hub and California High Speed Rail, have been proposed and approved, but have stalled or are taking much longer than expected. Legitimate train travel just does not seem to be a priority. But it never will be if the argument is always that there are better modes of transportation and that ridership would be low, which is not true. If it is available, it will be used. Just look at the Metro-North around the New York metro area.

3.) Making it Cost-Effective - In Europe, the Eurail pass was pretty expensive, virtually to the point that air travel was looking like an economical option between certain cities. Yet somehow rail is still used extensively there, probably because cities revolved around it from the beginning. But what I don’t understand is that a hundred years ago, the only method of transportation in the U.S. was train, but for some reason it died off precipitously. Since train would have speeds between a car and plane, I would imagine that its price should also be in between. Making these numbers match up is very difficult, since so many people like to drive in the U.S. and track and train maintenance is surprisingly expensive. But how are China and Japan doing it? Maybe they’re taking a financial hit for the betterment of society.

Anyway, I know there are a lot of practical hurdles in realizing legitimate train travel in the U.S. No one is saying to have a route between Chicago and San Francisco, but it is important that we can have high-speed, possibly maglev, service in the major megalopolis areas, such as Bos-Wash, the Midwest, the Texas triangle, and on the West Coast. On top of that, I feel like we already have an entire organizational infrastructure (the Interstate system) that we can use, as trains can run on the medians or on the sides of the highway. I know there are plans for this, but I’m just getting impatient as all of these projects are slowing due to political and legal issues. Train travel would be heavily used intercity in the the megalopolises, cars could be used intracity, and planes could be used for long distances. There, problem solved. If only it were that easy…

Aside: For some reason, I have a feeling that I have talked about something like this before (maybe it was just in normal conversation). I’m not sure whether it was on my blog, but I’m having extreme deja vu right now.