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There is no excuse. The US should have an extensive, publicly owned high-speed rail network. It’s 2022. I should be able to get from Chicago to New York in 5 hours for about $40. Chicago to San Francisco in 10 hours for $80. The trains should be comfortable, provide free Wi-Fi and have a bar car that sells PBR tallboys for $3. If I can’t do that, then what in the heck is even the point of the United States? No, thanks!
This is not a new idea. I am by far the first person to suggest this. Plenty of people have been proclaiming the joys and wonders of public rail long before me. I am merely the first person to suggest that the trains should sell $3 PBR tallboys. A true contribution to the discourse.
The case for public high-speed rail is simple. For one, it freaking rules! If you want a more in-depth analysis, I guess I can also provide that. Secondly, increased high-speed train usage would reduce travel by car and plane, both major non-industrial polluters. To tie this all to the news, if there were easy-to-use rail then Kylie Jenner wouldn’t take 14-minute-long private flights across LA. Just use the train! It’d make a great Kardashians episode. Decreased plane and car usage would in turn reduce the amount of gas consumed by Americans every year, a true plague on the environment.
It’s not just the environment that would benefit from larger rail networks either. The consumer would also benefit in a myriad of ways. Rail travel is much more comfortable and easier than plane travel. No long security lines, no sitting in crowded airports, no hoping that your flight will be on time so that you can make the first of your three connections. All of that is no longer a problem with rail travel. The seats are bigger, you can move around for the entire trip, and there are entire cars dedicated to just looking out the window. If you want, you can even get a sleeper car, complete with a full bed, though you’d need to be going on an extra-long trip to use that. It’s just all-around a much better experience.
Of course, all of this goes away if it isn’t publicly owned. If the government tries to build high-speed rail networks through various public-private partnerships, or tax breaks, then it’s very easy to envision a horrible travel experience akin to flying. Delta-owned Union Station is not something I want to even consider.
I’m not even saying this as someone who has enjoyed every train trip I’ve ever taken. I’ve taken Amtrak a few times, once from Iowa to Chicago and one round-trip between Montana and Chicago. All three rides were rough, with two of my three trips running into over ten-hour delays. On the Iowa to Chicago trip, the train ran out of food, after a four-hour ride turned into a ten-hour one. But I know that with a fully funded, publicly owned rail network, these sorts of catastrophes would be a thing of the past. Or at least far less catastrophic.
This isn’t a pipe dream either. I’m not describing something that has never been done. Europe, Japan, and other places are covered in effective highly regulated and at least partially government-owned high-speed rail systems. People use them all the time, as they’re cheaper, more efficient, and just a more pleasant experience in general than flying. Hell, Spain is making a bunch of their train rides free starting this September. That’s just smart. The technology for high-speed rail exists and has existed for quite a long-time. The US government is just too corrupt to do anything about it. Oil and auto industries spend boatloads of dollars in lobbying money every year in part to stop things like this.
Building all of this would not be cheap or easy. But what it costs now, it would pay back a billion-fold. It would require a huge infrastructure investment, something that the US hasn’t really done since the Interstate Highway System was built. It would cost billions, perhaps even trillions of dollars, over several decades to build a fully fleshed out rail system. But the trick is that it would generate even more in long-term jobs across the country, environmental savings, and fees from usage of those rails. Maintenance alone would provide good steady jobs across the country. Eventually, the rail lines could perhaps even link up throughout Canada, and Mexico, extending all the way down through South America, ala Eurorail. It would also increase tourism, and provide other fringe benefits, like more TikToks from people who really love trains. Who doesn’t want that?
There are no real drawbacks to this idea, other than that it would hurt the pocketbook of like the Exxon C-Suite, but I really don’t give a shit about them. If Congress can pass military budgets that include money for things that the Armed Forces didn’t even ask for, it can do stuff like this. The money is there, it’s just the political will do to anything useful that isn’t.
Since President Johnson left office big, non-military, projects like this have gone by the wayside. Unless you want to count Reagan’s “Star Wars,” I guess. Every so often someone will win an election or two campaigning on big projects like this one, but so far, no one has been able to push it across the finish line. Biden’s infrastructure bill spends a lot of dough but doesn’t re-vamp anything whole cloth, and certainly doesn’t re-shape the economy. These sorts of bills, think the recent Green New Deal, which I wholeheartedly endorse, are usually stopped in the name of “fiscal responsibility” or “too much big government,” or “socialism.” These are all excuses to cover up how much lobbying money is involved in stopping anti-car legislation, and a lack of political imagination.
While a boosted train system won’t solve the climate crisis or anything like that, it will go a long way toward showing that big steps can be taken by the government to try and avert it. Just like getting rid of cars in cities. It will take multiple huge projects to stop environmental catastrophes, much of them led by a government willing to do such things. This would be a great first step in proving its feasibility.
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