![\"\"](\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/trains-1.jpg\")
\nPete Buttigieg at Washington Union Station. Source: Wikipedia.<\/em><\/p>\n
With “Amtrak Joe<\/a>” in the White House, and the new U.S. secretary of transportation wanting to lead the world in high-speed rail (we’re now 19th<\/a>) can we Americans now have some nice things?<\/p>\n To people like me, who have ridden thousands of miles on trains (President Biden has ridden 770,000 miles on trains), it amazes me how many people have never ridden a train. How could they not be curious? I admit that I love cars, too. But where is their spirit of adventure? Certain images inspire awe and imagination: A Concorde in flight (a sight not seen since 2003), a square-rigged sailing ship under full sail in a white-capped sea, a Saturn 5 rocket lifting off, a Boeing 747 descending above the Golden Gate Bridge, a steam train working its way across Scotland’s Glenfinnan Viaduct on its way to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Some of those things are not doable. But anyone, even an American, can ride a train.<\/p>\n We don’t have a lot of details so far, but we do know that the Biden administration and the new Congress will push for a major investment in high-speed rail. We also know that Republicans will fight tooth and claw to resist, though Republicans don’t seem to mind the billions of dollars that this country spends each year on roads and gasoline.<\/p>\n Why do conservatives hate trains? The pompous and dull-witted George Will is infamous for claiming to know why we progressives love trains: “[T]he real reason for progressives\u2019 passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans\u2019 individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.” Does that make any sense at all when a few million Americans fly each day on packed airplanes, with about as much room left for their individualism as for their legs? I’m not the first to suspect<\/a> that the real reason that conservatives hate trains is racism. <\/p>\n Trains for America — fast ones — make more sense now than ever. Our interstate highways are overloaded, dangerous, and miserable. To me, one of the most exciting things about this change in the American government is that trains are back on the agenda. New York City has made a nice start with the new train hall at Pennsylvania Station<\/a>.<\/p>\n One more thing. The kind of people who hate trains also are the kind of people who would try to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service. The first order of business is to fire Louis DeJoy, a Trump appointee. Then we can start talking about new services, new revenues, and a new prosperity for the Postal Service. <\/p>\n Pete Buttigieg at Washington Union Station. Source: Wikipedia. With “Amtrak Joe” in the White House, and the new U.S. secretary of transportation wanting to lead the world in high-speed rail (we’re now 19th) can we Americans now have some nice things? To people like me, who have ridden thousands of miles on trains (President Biden … Continue reading “Can we have some nice things now?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,8,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-economic-issues","category-political-issues","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20674"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20703,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20674\/revisions\/20703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/trains-2.jpg\")
\nI took this photo in Paddington Station in August 2019, on my way from London Heathrow to Edinburgh.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/trains-3.jpg\")
\nCatching the train from Uig to Inverness, August 2019<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/trains-4.jpg\")
\nNew York City’s new train hall. Source: Wikipedia, photo by Jim Henderson<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/train-5.jpg\")
\nThe Jacobite steam train crossing the Glenfinnan Viaduct. Source: Wikipedia photo by Nicholas Benutzer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"