Riding to DC on the Metroliner for an open house on the occasion of my sister’s twins' birthday.
The Acela, the train that was supposed so be the East Coast version of the European and Japanese high speed inter-urban trains, is no longer. It never reached true high speed, was a year late getting off the ground, and now has been shut down indefinitely.
I rode it a few times. It did eventually overtake the Metroliner in speed, but not by very much. Many times it actually arrived later than the cheaper train. It was a bit more sleek and designed, though unfortunately the café car was designed to discourage lingering or even sitting down. It had a few high stools and counters where one could balance, but no real tables. Guess that was an effort to eliminate crowding and bunching in that car, but instead you ended up with a wasted almost empty car. Maybe that was a Homeland security directive — no getting to know other passengers! The Metroliner at least has tables, which is where I am sitting now, plugged in, with a coffee and an egg sandwich beside me.
I ask myself what it is in the structure and financing of a railroad (or any business) that seems to encourage such incompetence? My dad would say that they need to be subsidized more than they are, which wouldn’t do much to discourage incompetence, but would at least eliminate the problems of track and engine maintenance and the availability of regularly scheduled trains to lesser-visited towns.
Others would say that like all “socialized” industries, the railroad, like the post office, eliminates any incentive to do better. That may also be true. One recognizes the same brand of lethargy in parts of Russian society — the part that hasn’t robbed the other part.
My dad would also say that the great network of highways in this country, and others, are largely subsidized — a funding no doubt lobbied for by the defense deptartment (Hitler and Rome built roads) and the oil industries. This goes a long way towards undermining the railroads and any other public transportation except buses and taxis. Does the gas tax pay for all these roads and road maintenance? I doubt it covers very much of it. Tax dollars do, and they thereby subvert the railroads and all public transportation, by making it cheaper and more convenient to ship goods by truck, which use up lots more gas per mile. Roads, the asphalt equivalent of rails, are mostly provided free of charge.
Likewise, airlines are subsidized. Recently United has managed to dump their pension debts that they can’t pay onto the taxpayer.
Bush and Co. want to cut Amtrak funds further, as a kind of punishment for the incompetence and un-profitability that their policies and those of their predecessors have encouraged. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy, I guess.
It can work, though. In France, Spain, Germany and Japan the trains run on time, they’re not too expensive, and they go everywhere quickly. The TGV is almost as fast as flying from Paris to Geneva, for example, and the recent linking of the French and Spanish systems means the whole EC will be networked soon. So the socialized system does not seem to be the whole answer to what’s wrong in the U.S., as these foreign systems are I believe government run.
Despite the recent train crash the Japanese system is legendary, for speed and punctuality — in fact it is the obsessive need to be exactly on time that was partly the cause of the crash, according to some reports.
The view of the Jersey meadows — sun shining on slimy water with a few egrets and ducks along the edges — now we are passing acres of brownlands, workers' housing, refineries. The rails are a kind of causeway — there is no access to this land we are riding over. The scrub that borders the tracks is overgrown with kudzu, an imported plant that strangles the natives. Now we’re paralleling the turnpike, a large lake is on the other side — the turnpike and the tracks segregate the communities nearby from the waterfront. There are a few limited access points to the water, I’m sure, but for the most part the two are separated as if by a wall.
As if fulfilling the above prophesy the return train to N.Y. from DC has broken down just north of Philadelphia. It just stopped. I can see row houses and bushes over the embankment. The early evening light is golden and beautiful. Scraggly weeds lit brightly against shadowy dirty backgrounds. The man on the intercom says the engineers are going to “recycle” the engine. Recycle?
A few minutes later he says we might back up to Philadelphia. Then a few more minutes and he says they might send a new engine out. Soon. Then finally he says we’re going to hop on the next train that comes by, which will stop across the track. It will “most likely” make all our stops. We all laugh at the phrase most likely.
God forbid anyone here might be trying to connect to another train, or worse, a night flight to Europe. Guess I won’t be home for dinner. Do people here know that trains run better than this in dirty old Eastern Europe, in Mexico, in Malaysia?
Australian town names (NSW):
Burleigh Heads
Tumbulgum
Mooball
Tweed Heads
