Dear America:
From the gently rollicking second car of the Rail Runner I write to you. It’s a beautiful day. The sun glances off the Sandias in golden shafts, the river valley is astonishingly green, and the sky rivals the most beautiful New Mexico turquoise. I’m barreling north at eighty miles per hour, and I’m taking breaks from typing to just gaze out the window and absorb it all.
It’s inspired me to say a few words to you:
This attitude about trains has got to stop. It was charmingly provincial for just a little while–we were the bumpkins who’d gotten our hands on these new automobile thingies and couldn’t stop vrooming them. I get it–it’s fun. They go fast, and they do that whenever you ask them to. But look at how much they’ve cost us (not what we paid for them–what they cost us. Very different stuff.).
In our orgiastic worshiping at the altar of Progress, we sacrificed huge tracts of land, our clean air and clear water, and our personal (though sometimes questionable) sanity. What we got in return seems now paltry in comparison. But how we cling to our hot pavement, vast parking lots, spewing tailpipes, foreign oil, junkyards, and oily car salesmen. Pry those riches from our cold, dead, stupid, short-sighted fingers!
Really, at this point, it’s no longer a rational position. It’s just starting to look like a character flaw.
I’m not suggesting we all immediately set fire to our personal vehicles (though I wouldn’t stop you if that’s the approach you chose). Let’s go with baby steps, shall we? For starters, stop using the word “subsidized” for train travel and “funded” for the gargantuan infrastructure required for car travel. Like showing the top of your stockings at Uncle Morty’s funeral, you’ve revealed too much. That particular bias is petty and ill-founded, and it shows every time you try to spin the vocabulary.
I understand you feel like you’ll have to give up too much if you start using the train as more than convenient whipping boy. Though many of you would never admit it (and frequently and loudly declare precisely the opposite), drama has indeed become our national pastime, and it’s an attitude that requires individualized transportation to maintain at this high level.
Like our garage-fronted houses, our cars are incubators for our own now larger-than-life hothouse personalities. Cocooned in our personal steel, plastic, and glass bubbles, the only sound we hear is our own voices. The car is our own personal echo chamber, amplifying everything about us–the smell of the fast-food tacos we just ate, the talk radio shouting at us what to think, the incessantly beeping cell phone, the soft rustle of shopping bags swaddling whatever cheap crap was most recently on sale and in bulk at Costco. The people around us become mere obstacles, to be passed, cut off, middle-fingered, and tailgated.
I understand that all this hotheaded jockeying for position really fires up the ole reptile brain. Who’d want to trade all that video-game-esque false combat for a communal travel experience? Finding that there are other ways to communicate with people than smugly grinning at them when you take their parking space? No thank you. And consider all the other hazards of train travel: Typing or texting or reading or makeup-ing without the scintillating possibility of killing someone else. Scenery that doesn’t include parking lot frontage. No idling at red lights, savoring the complex aroma of exhaust. Exposure to other people, some of whom actually turn out to be (gasp) not the enemy. Arriving at your destination refreshed and/or productive and/or relaxed, and wholly lacking in the desire to punch someone out.
Sounds like a dastardly yet pleasant plot to take down everything that makes America great, you say? If a patriotic slant is what you require, consider that the West was pillaged opened by horses and trains. Given that the average suburban McMansion has no room for the former, perhaps you’ll give the latter a whirl. Call it retro-jingo.
But perhaps the most enticing idea I can offer is this: given our cultural attraction to more more more of everything, perhaps you could simply add the train to your That’s How I Roll list. Those other sorry schmucks just have one ride–you’ve pimped your roster out way past that. And fashionable? Hello! The amateur hipsters are bringing back the 1980′s. You can bring back the 1880′s. Trains, bikes… those wheels are so past, they’re future!
Or you could just be like Spike and Do the Right Thing. How’s that for a concept?
Regardless, the rail gets my two thumbs up. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to stretch my legs, surf the webs, finish my coffee, and maybe take a little nap. Sound about as relaxing as your trip today?
Choo choo,
js
PS–Remember, in a case of train-vs-car, train pretty much always wins, and spectacularly. Just wait a few goddamn minutes to cross.
