Riding the rails

The automobile is a wonderful invention. I've owned one throughout my adult life and sometimes two. There are few things I enjoy more than a long road trip covering unlikely distances in few days. I've done more than a thousand miles in a single day and consider six hundred to be a baseline number.

Beyond my fetishes, a car is pretty much required if you are to live in this country, particularly the arid west where distances are long and other forms of transport simply not available. Much is heard these days about the death of the automobile era, but don't believe a word of it. Technology is now available to keep us safely in our vehicles and happy long after the last drop of oil has been burned.

That said, we really should be developing and building rail transport systems starting right away. These should take three forms, urban rail transit systems similar to what exist in New York, London, and elsewhere; commuter trains like the newer transit systems in San Francisco, Atlanta, and Washington; and inter-city train systems on the European model.

The car as prime means of travel grew here largely because of the amount of land available. The vast continent provided ample land for the people and our history developed around the myth of the individual yeoman sustaining self and family on land he owned. This morphed in the second half of the twentieth century into a suburban tract which provided ample space for a person to maintain the myth.

Cities grew up during the years of the Industrial Age, but many of them have failed and are often viewed as places for misfits and suspicious classes of people. It's axiomatic that cities are populated by the very rich and very poor with no place for the vibrant middle. Such is the paradigm of the past 60 years or so, the post-war years.

More and more however this model is proving unsustainable. Cheap power is no longer available. In the more attractive areas sprawl development has become more and more difficult. We are learning that land, like oil, is not an infinite resource. Long commutes from depressing suburbs along pollution soaked corridors are not attractive to more and more people. Infill is the new game.

I think the European models of mass transport are looming on the horizon as a solution to many of these ills. Already in the Bay Area BART has shown itself to be a heavily used commuter service bringing armies of workers from distant suburbs quickly and efficiently. The New York subway system does the same. Both of these are reaching critical junctures in their lives. rather than using our transportation dollars on more freeways that aren't free, we should be diverting them to strengthening these systems and developing new ones. Those that insist on driving should finance their extravagance through toll roads and the like.