I’m not sure if an opinion piece is appropriate here, so please let me know if this doesn’t fit the theme of the community, and I’ll avoid sharing such thoughts in the future.
I’m extremely frustrated with the car centric culture in my area. I live about 25 miles west of a quarry. Every day I watch trains go up and down the railroad mostly carrying gravel. This railroad stretches for several hours by car in each direction, connecting several large cities and even passing a few tourist attractions, and despite our traffic congestion problems there is little interest in trying to use this rail for actual people.
One company moved in and started running a new passenger rail service. Within a few weeks, we had protesters at the railroads complaining that drivers don’t understand railroad crossings. I saw posters about how trains were killing residents when drivers park on the tracks and get hit. I don’t understand! Where do you think the train is going to go? They don’t exactly come out of nowhere. They follow the tracks! And we’ve always had trains passing through our town before. At a later local election a candidate ran on the premise that they’re going to protect home values and our children by reducing or eliminating the number of trains passing through our town. This candidate did win our local election and sadly they succeeded in cutting down on rail investment.
Fast-forward a couple years later. Passenger rail stations were built at the endpoints of this rail to ferry tourists. I drive parallel to this rail on the way to work several times per week for almost 45 minutes each way, 20 minutes of which is heavy traffic. I get to enjoy watching people ride the train while there’s no stop anywhere near my house because our local government has sided with homeowners that a passenger rail station is “simply too dangerous.” I would have to drive over an hour to the nearest passenger rail station to ride the train, and I can literally see the tracks from my apartment.
Every time I see that train I feel bitter. I could save so much money if these boneheads would have let them build a train station in our town. Absolutely ridiculous! The train is there. The rail is there. I don’t understand why a train is such a personal, existential threat to your way of life.
100%! The arguments I heard against building the station were asinine. The logic just doesn’t follow. For example, the train is dangerous to children? Well how about the actual highway that runs next to the track? Clearly that’s not a threat or dangerous to residents in any way. As we all know, cars are perfectly safe. One little girl gets hit by the train and we ignore all the deaths of the children from auto accidents. The rail is overwhelmingly safer.
I’ve lived in this town for quite a long time and it’s a common occurrence to see cars stopped on the train tracks. While we have plenty of idiots, I can hardly blame the train if a car gets hit. It should always be the fault of the vehicle.
It infuriates me to my bones how Americans specifically think about driving vs. other modes of transportation.
$34B to repair a quarter-mile long stretch of highway? What the hey, it’s not our money (Narrator: it was, at least partially).
$10M to add bike lanes to a busy road with one of the highest crash fatality statistics in my city that’s basically a highway? REEEE NOT IN MY BACKYARD!
My stupid town hasn’t even succeeded in preventing the train from passing through. They just don’t want a station here so no one can benefit from the train. What a stupid stupid policy.
If people could take it, they might realize that cars are actually one of the worst modes of transportation ever invented by humanity. That would be unacceptable to the auto industry.
NIMBYs are, by and large, very stupid.
Worse. They’re afraid. Of what, you say? Couldn’t tell you, and they can’t either.
My city had Amtrak back in the 70s or something and it came back a few years ago. The common thread I see around here is “I caught an hour delay one time so never again!”
Never mind that they get held up for hours every other time they travel on the highway, that’s just part of it, I guess? Enjoy sitting there burning gas I’ll just take a nap 🤷
Even worse, those same people come home from their commute and immediately pour themselves a drink or kvetch to their partners about how bad the commute was. I mean… you cannot convince me that ANYONE likes sitting in traffic, it’s just anathema to the human mind.
Unfortunately the trains are like that, especially under a few circumstances:
Sure, and all of that should be tended to, but it doesn’t make massive delays an absolute or change that driving can be just as unreliable but gets this mental loophole even though people bitch about it constantly.
Absolutely. I was hearing that Switzerland has excellent on time performance, to the point where 5 minutes is considered late (and that happens infrequently). For comparison, Amtrak uses a 15 minute threshold for lateness. This accuracy, the “integrated timetable” strategy that syncs trains with other trains and transportation modes, and frequent service allow for tight transfer times.
Also the fact that the vast majority of our remaining rails are owned by private freight companies that get to make up silly rules like passenger trains having to pull over for ridiculously long and slow freight trains to pass them.
Yeah, passenger trains pretty much have no choice if there is a 2 mile freight train, a single track, and a short siding. The passenger train has to pull off and wait. There really need to be something like financial penalties for the rail carrier every time that happens. Something to make extremely long trains uneconomical.
One thing they’ve been working on in my neck of the woods on the Amtrak Cascades line is passenger train only track that runs in the same right-of-way. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but I assume that passenger trains run on it by default and switch to the freight rail or sidings when there is a passenger train going the other way. The Seattle-Portland leg is already congested between freight and passenger traffic. Additional track should aid on time performance for the eventual target of 13 round trips per day. They also got the line rerouted off a single track route that was a serious bottleneck.
Because those aren’t the actual arguments they respond to, just the face of the arguments. The real argument is that the car is an extension of the self. They should be able to drive anywhere, park anywhere, drive anything, without fear (Traffic deaths are unavoidable and unremarkable), judgment (I drive a Tesla, I’m saving the earth!), or undue cost (gas and maintenance. Sometimes tolls.) except for that which they’ve already internalized.
Public transport is by definition collective. The train is not an extension of you. It is a thing we all collectively benefit from. It isn’t tailored to your specific tastes. It doesn’t go 0-60 faster than Joe Nextdoor’s train. Everyone pays the same, you can’t show off how fancy your ticket is.
Some kid killed on the tracks is the fault of the train, because the driver could have been any of us. We are relatable people. The train is an unrelatable, unaccountable “us” that Americans will never, ever choose over their ideal “me.”
I appreciate the thoughtful response. I think I understand that the vehicle is connected deeply with identity, but no one’s threatening to take away their vehicles. I’m surprised that public transportation is taken so personally.
If you don’t like the train, you don’t have to take the train. But, that’s not enough. They don’t want the train to be available to me either. It’s weird. It’s taken one step further into a fuck you I’ve got mine attitude.
In places with good transit, you actually can show off a fancy ticket. Some rail offers first class flight type of accommodations which can include more leg/seat room, comfier seating, a meal, and other amenities.
My brother at 13 was killed by a train
What my mother did was start a campaign to get people to practice common sense and safety around trains. Our family doesn’t blame the train at all - We instead got better crossing safety put in place and helped get more awareness that train tracks are stabilized in cities to minimize noise and that horns are directed outwards, so a train is quieter head on than you think, ie look both ways before you cross
Like, if my own family can get that, then why can’t these anti train fucks?
It isn’t about logic, it is about preventing the station which prevents the denser developments that come with it and prevents people from living in those developments. These protesters mostly want to preserve (read increase) their property values while preserving the “character of the neighbourhood” (read if you don’t already live here, you don’t belong).
We need those denser deployments: we have a growing population, a homeless problem, and a lack of affordable housing. This is even ignoring the traffic issues on the nearby highways. It’s bad, but the message to me is clearly that we don’t want to solve any of these problems.
I agree, we definitely need density and transit. It would help the climate and housing situations.