Of course there are "reasons" and explanations for why passenger train travel from small towns to cities has for all practical purposes disappeared. The town I grew up in, the town my father grew up in used to have a depot right in the heart of small town Missouri. I remember being in second grade back in the early seventies when Dad rode the train to work in downtown St. Louis. My mom and I would wave at him as we stood on the platform seeing the big Missouri Pacific passenger train whisk Dad off to work. He loved riding the train. And then it seemed like all of a sudden one day it was all over with. No more Mo-Pac passenger service, then the city decided to tear down the historic depot (like so many other towns across America have done) and AmTrak was not in the business of making dozens of stops in small towns across America. I know how the disappearance of connective passenger trains affected not only my father, but so many hundreds of others in town who no longer had the option of riding the train to the city. People talked about it and they were saddened but they seemed to feel and believe there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. It was just an unchangeable fact that our nation's leaders and corporate executives wanted to fill America with cars, cars, cars, and more cars. Nevermind that some people couldn't afford a car, nevermind the fact that many women had lived well into their sixties and seventies never having a need to learn to drive a car, nevermind the fact that life-altering decisions were made by those whose interest lay more in the wealth they could achieve through the automobile industry than in the overall well-being of the American citizens.
So this is the speech I would like to hear an American political leader make:
Americans, a mistake in our country's great history has been realized. We tried to make a transition from train travel to car travel but looking back through the years, we see the disastrous results.We have to admit our short-sightedness and greed and do the right thing: we must re-build the criss-cross of tracks running with all kinds of trains through the beautiful landscape of our country. How can we consider ourselves a "super-power" of the World when unlike dozens and dozens of other countries trains run every day on a variety of schedules? Countries in Europe, Asia, India, etc. rely heavily on trains to transport millions of people every day. We have fallen behind. We have spit in the eyes of our own citizens by ripping up tracks, reducing Am-Trak stops and schedules, and forcing people to rely on the automobile for transportation.
It's time to right this wrong. Don't we owe it to the nation's leaders who in the mid to late 1800's envisioned and then constructed a nationwide rail system? Don't we owe it to all the many men who gave their lives for "progress?"
Sure, executives and leaders will argue that the auto industry creates and provides valuable jobs for many Americans. But why not reduce the number of cars and then focus on creating new jobs in a multitude of fields related to a railroad industry? Why does Japan have a fast bullet train but we don't? Why does South Korea have four different types of passenger trains than we have? And their trains always run on time--unlike the sham of the thing we call AmTrak. When's the last time you rode on an AmTrak train? They are a disgrace to our country--filthy, almost always running late, no decent, affordable food on board...just an absolute flaw in America's transportation system. The time has come to admit our failures, correct them, create tons of railroad related jobs, and pardon the pun--get this country back on the right track!
No comments:
Post a Comment