My View From Ninety today, raises an outcry at our United States Public (so-called) Transportation System, or all too accurately, lack thereof! For decades car manufacturers and oil cartels, slowly and seditiously have taken over public transportation with arrogant disregard for the welfare of either our citizenry or our planet. Almost entirely disregarding the environmentally sound, quieter, safer, certainly more reliable railroads that once made travel a total pleasure. Not only could we get from state to state, city to city, but small town to even smaller one. All now gone. Did nobody notice? We became so obsessed with the automobile and airplane that we failed to heed the steady, subtle erosion of more comfortable, affordable, ecologically sensible railroad, once part and parcel of life in these United States.
How come it is different in Europe, Asia, Africa! Why haven't the citizenry taken arms against this problem? As a child I remember the guileless delight I had as I boarded the train from our home in the village of Tarrytown, New York heading for that mighty metropolis, Manhattan! I remember the peace of the gentle-rocking in a parlor car as I slept safe and sound while we sped to Portland, Maine. Nor did it stop there. Chicago, San Francisco! Oh the joy of riding cross country on the 20th Century Limited! Is there anyone any longer who even remembers the 20th Century Limited, or for that matter the trains that chugged from Newport to Orleans, Vermont!
What has become of our free and independent nation that we have permitted these rights to vanish without rising in tempestuous protest! How Alemming@ have we become to allow such disintegration to subsume the quality of our lives!
Granted, our largest cities maintain reliable public transportation. But what about smaller ones such as Burlington! Submissive lambs-to-slaughter, we grudgingly accommodate ourselves to air travel despite it's growing more and more costly with increasing disregard for passenger comfort. Isn't it time for us to straighten up and fly right! But no, the airlines do not straighten up nor fly right! We are shunted into bigger, more crowded planes at higher prices while schedules grow more unreliable, with unapologetic delays and even occasional bumping.
Why do we permit this! What has turned our spunky selves into submissive sheep! There was a time in Vermont when trains chugged from town to town once a day. Less than twenty years past buses, at least, ran between Newport and Burlington. Aren=t Vermonters humiliated that they cannot get from Montpelier, our State Capitol for heavens sake, to Burlington, our biggest city except by car or one bus a day!
But back to the railroad!. Why can I not see friends in Portland, Maine (much less Portland, Oregon) unless I fly? Why, for that matter, can I not even get to Oregon except by airplane instead of the long-ago civilized train complete with dining service and comfortable sleeping arrangements! Even the bus service from Burlington to Manhattan has not only been curtailed and re-routed to include the smallest of towns making it an interminably long drive, yet the price has increased. When are we going to join the rest of the world by reinstating train travel!
Over a year ago France inaugurated a super speed train from Paris to Marseilles that makes the trip in less time than it takes The Vermonter to reach Manhattan from Essex Junction. In Europe there are trains, boats, all manner of clean, comfortable, reliable ways to reach remote villages no matter how hidden, high or sparsely populated. In Japan it is national policy that if a train is more than 20 minutes late the traveler retrieves the cost of the ticket!
Isn't it time we demand improved public transportation? We know the environmental disaster cars cause. We know we want our green state to remain, yea grow, greener. And here's an idea whose time should come: expand the ferry system to include water travel to Canada and Lake Champlain ports! Talk about seducing tourists! Wow! And Holy Cow! Allow your mind to run over the bonanza benefits accrued were we to establish eco-friendly train, boat, and bus service in this glorious state. Already I see the masses of leaf peepers, snow boarders, lilac lovers, fisher people in frenzied fury fighting for entry into our singular countryside Electrifying is the beauty in our state, sometimes beauty beyond bearing. We want to keep that beauty? Am I an impossible 90 dreamer! Can I not manifest a multitude to stamp feet, pound tables in such effective numbers that trains abound! Vermont is the place to start. Here where, in the main, we are almost smug about our congressional legislators with intelligence, courage and farsightedness. Legislators who give us hope. Can we not rally them round to reestablishing a state-wide, at least, railroad system!
Let's hear it for the railroads!
If you wish to learn more about my philosophy check out my book Yoga In The Morning, Martini at Night or The First Three-Score and Ten are the Hardest, available at Amazon.com.
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3 comments:
Keep stomping and screaming! You may be able to wake people from their car induced stupor. It is unfortunate that the passenger trains in the midwest were pretty much a thing of the past when I was growing up. I did make use of city buses as a teenager though. Currently there is a study being done on the feasability running a rail service from Texas through Oklahoma to Kansas. http://ksborn.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-here-that-train-comin.html It will be a wonderful thing if it happens.
Trains in Europe are not cheap. But at least they go everywhere.
I think it would be great! I have never had the pleasure of traveling by train EXCEPT when I was stationed in Germany while serving in the military. And, it was wonderful! And, I have missed the availability of excellent public transportation that exists in Germany and most of Europe since returning to the U.S. But, as we all know all too well by now, the American automobile companies are a major and powerful force here. Apparently, our country cannot survive if these corporations lose too much money.
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