Commentary: Passenger Rail: Needed Now More Than Ever
This may seem counterintuitive, but I’m not what you would call a passenger-train advocate. That probably has more than any single other factor to do with the fact that prior to my retirement, in my getting to and from work, there just was no need for me to ride trains. I always drove to work and back.
About the closest I have ever been to using the train for day-to-day travel was the one year in 1977 when I lived in Mountain View, California and worked six miles distant in neighboring Sunnyvale. I worked in the high-tech industry.
The apartment I lived in was located adjacent to the then Southern Pacific (San Francisco) Peninsula commute line in the vicinity of Rengstorff Avenue. There was also a station sited there. However, I would have needed to find a way to get to work from the Sunnyvale-based train station nearest my employer’s location. It was too far to walk which would have required either my taking a bus or hailing a cab (if that was even possible). All in all, the process seemed just too convoluted for my liking and it would have added extra expense and time to the work weekday round-trip commute. As it was, I drove. The outbound and inbound commutes took 30 minutes and 45 minutes, respectively.
So, in talking with two of my friends on Sept. 24th (one via phone and one in person), each of them went on about ordeals each had to deal with when driving.
The one shared that he almost got into an altercation with another electric-vehicle owner over whose turn it was to use a battery charger that the two of them each, at the same time apparently, were waiting to use.
The other friend, meanwhile, recounted the time he flew from central California to Portland, Oregon, to visit family living in Albany and how just driving five miles from the Rose City airport on (I would assume) Interstate-5, took him 30 minutes. He said that south of Portland, traffic was free-flowing.
All of this now makes me think of the need for more of our travel needs needing to be satisfied using viable passenger rail.
But, it’s not enough to just have more passenger-train service. The service must also be convenient. Which, in essence, boils down to the trains themselves needing to articulate well with other modes like buses and what-not and their needing to go where people must and/or want to get to. And, if not directly to specific venues like employment-, shopping-, and medical-centers and/or medical offices, central business districts, suburban outposts, academic institutions, dining establishments, etc., then at least they should go to and serve stations located within a reasonable walking distance from.
It would help if more of America’s metropolises were made more conducive to walking.
I know I’ve talked a lot about building in more roadway capacity via lane additions, also known as highway widening.
So get a load of this. There’s a Texas highway that has some ridiculous number of lanes to it. I don’t want to misquote the number as I would be hazarding a guess as to how many lanes wide this one particular stretch of highway is, so I won’t. But, I know the number is in the double digits and I’m not just talking five lanes per (highway) side either. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, per side, it was two or three times that. My one-word response: Seriously?!
As it has to do with rail-transit building programs, I was on hand in San Francisco when the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system opened. That was in Sept. 1972. Though I didn’t ride it then, I was afforded that opportunity two years later. I was impressed, not only from the standpoint of how fast it was (BART topped out at 79 mph), but also with regard to ride quality: Really smooth is what comes to mind.
I didn’t think about it at the time, but BART goes places. Everywhere from Daly City and Millbrae on the peninsula side to Berryessa (near San Jose) and Dublin-Pleasanton, in the Bay Area’s east side. The reach, in a word, is extensive.
Add to this other systems I’ve ridden, namely, the San Diego Trolley from its namesake city to San Ysidro at the U.S./Mexico border and back, Valley MetroRail light rail in the Phoenix metroplex, both the Baltimore and New York City subway systems, the Altamont Corridor Express between San Jose and Stockton, and the San Francisco Cable Car, to name several. Each of these — in addition to those domestic systems I haven’t ridden — adding another dimension in the grand scheme of travel that just wouldn’t exist if this option weren’t available.
The point I’m trying to make is that driving isn’t the be all, end all for all travelers. Frankly, I’m glad it’s not. A reminder: domestic driving accounts for more than 3 trillion annual miles logged and, on American highways, there are a coupled 40,000 yearly deaths.
In New York City, meanwhile, New York Governor Kathy Hochul put on hold a congestion pricing plan that, if I recall correctly, was supposed to go into effect Jun. 30th. If implemented, the result would have been fewer car commutes into and exiting the city’s Central Business District (CBD). Congestion pricing would have, at least in theory anyway, also cut down on the amount of localized air pollution. Had that been the outcome, there is definitely something to be said in implementing such a plan.
It should also not be lost on anyone that if post-pandemic driving levels have returned to what they were just prior to COVID striking, then there is the potential for passenger-train volumes to do the same. The question is, have they? Only on some services have they. In that department, we could and should be doing better, which is why I pine for more passenger-train use. Need I say more?!
Updated: Sept. 26, 2024 at 11:37 a.m. PDT.
Image data: BART/Wikimedia Commons
All material copyrighted 2024, Alan Kandel. All Rights Reserved.