I Like Trains
Wed., October 1, 11:31 AM
Husband and I went to Boston last weekend to visit Son and see his new home. Both because I can’t make that long a drive any more and because Husband is a difficult passenger, we decided to use Amtrak. I do enjoy trains. You have to understand some things about trains:
- Trains are reliable even if they are often unrealistic. When I traveled daily to New York via the old New Haven Railroad, I usually rode a train that left Stamford at 7:30 a.m. and was due at Grand Central Station at 8:30 a.m. Even though it seldom got in by 8:30 (if it was ahead of schedule, the track controllers held it up!), it was usually in by 8:35. I call that reliable. It might have made some sense to rewrite the schedules, but achieving that level of change was tantamount to passing an act of Congress.
- One of my favorite things about trains is that, if you are traveling to a major city, when you arrive, you are there. It might not be the best part of the city, but you’re in the city, not thirty miles away at the airport.
- There’s a kind of peace of mind about riding a train. You know it won’t get lost, because it has to go on the track. Unlike a plane, you don’t have to be strapped to a seat for the duration of the trip; that is wonderful if you have a bad back or knees that lock or something similar. Unless you’re in first class, there are no cabin attendants, but I don’t mind getting up and walking to the café; I’ve always been able to keep my balance on trains. And once you get into your seat, you just might as well relax, because it’s out of your hands. There is absolutely nothing you can do about the time or the destination.
Amtrak is far more comfortable than a commuter train, and Son treated us to first class on the superspeed Acela for one way. Set up rather like an airplane cabin, it was actually roomier and more comfortable than the planes we rode to and from Florida. It was about 40 percent faster than the regular trains — though, indeed, it was late. (I think that’s a result of the tracks, which are never quite in perfect condition.) There isn’t much to see between Connecticut and Boston, though the shoreline is pretty. In another month, there will be color as well. Husband sat there reading a newspaper (very nice tables in this car), and every now and then I’d tap his paper and point to the window.
After one try for Husband to walk to his seat, he was so winded that we arranged for wheelchairs to get him on and off the trains. (And he will not give up his cigarettes — except when he is in an enforced no smoking environment.) When he tried to tell me he was as tired as I was, I pointed out that I had walked wherever he was wheeled, and he shut up.
Son’s home is, of course, non-smoking, but he has a tiny backyard where Husband could go outdoors and pollute the air. I love his place — bedroom, office, large living and dining area and kitchen that is open to the rest. It’s almost as big as the cheesebox, but I doubt that more than two people could live there comfortably. On the other hand, he is only one person, and he is enjoying it tremendously.
Trains. I am highly in favor of public transportation, but I’m afraid that we’ve probably gone too far to implement it properly, at least in this country. And so much of it is money controlled.
In the nineteenth century financiers encouraged adventurers like Buffalo Bill to kill the bison by offering them money for each skin they turned in. The skins were left to rot; the purpose was to get the prairies clear for the railroad tracks. They nearly made the bison extinct, but they managed to put railroads across the country.
In the twentieth century — particularly in the large western states — it was the oil interests at work, manipulating government money for highways and deserting those same railroads. There are portions of abandoned track all over the country, where the trains stopped running because it was no longer profitable to operate them.
In a short-sighted effort to save money, both trains and buses cut back their service. There were no buses on Sunday, for example, or they didn’t run after evening rush hour. If you had to go somewhere, you needed a car. Once you have a car, of course, why should you bother with buses or trains at all? So the number of riders decreases, and the transportation companies respond by cutting back even more service. A vicious circle that may destroy the whole concept of public transportation forever.
There are some large city areas that still have decent transportation systems. New York and Boston come to mind because they’re closest to me. However, streetcars never stretched all the way to the suburbs, so that you almost certainly need a car if you can’t afford to live in the heart of the city… There it goes again.
Without safe public transportation, what happens to people who can’t drive? And who can afford to pay for parking in the city, where valuable real estate must be sacrificed to storage places for autos? (It’s no real sacrifice to the parking lot owners, of course, they just raise prices.) I thought the Segway Human Transporter might be an answer (though it won’t go to the suburbs, I guess). But I just heard there’s been a recall… Do you suppose it’s the unit itself, or might it be politics again?
