I Have No Regrets Driving on America's Highways
Stop fetishizing trains.
“How civilized to catch a train, enjoy a meal on board and then go to bed in a cozy cabin while the moonlit world zips past,” mused New York Times columnist Dan Richards.
He adds, “But as Europe embraces the night train, the United States seems to be sleepwalking into a transport dead end, slashing funding for public infrastructure and firing transit workers. Long-distance public transport in America may be heading inexorably toward a binary choice: fast, exclusive and environmentally ruinous or slow, tortuous and run-down.”
I scan the column further, searching for a mention of President Trump’s energy agenda. And voila - the author delivers:
In President Trump’s second term, with many climate commitments and environmental protections already up in smoke, the road ahead seems clear: more gas-guzzling cars, planes and rockets. The national rail system is written off as either irreparably broken (like the long-suffering Amtrak) or a mismanaged white elephant (as with several stalled high-speed rail projects).
The author laments how the invention of the automobile liberated us from ineffective modes of transportation.
One reason for this is America’s identity as a land of individual freedom, an idea embodied by the mid-20th-century automobile. It’s clear that it hasn’t served America well. In an April study, “Does Car Dependence Make People Unsatisfied With Life?” researchers highlighted the correlation between high levels of car dependence and a crash in American drivers’ happiness and mental health. Far from freewheeling dream machines, cars now can represent headaches and nightmares — a depressing necessity in a congested land with few alternatives.
Yet, rather than invest in ways to help people leave their cars at home, America’s typical response to congestion has been to build more lanes and highways. In a nation where cars are king, it’s no surprise that more freeways are often portrayed as the only way.
He ends on this note:
Europeans have sleeper trains because we value the infrastructure, and we are the better for it. The prospect of that kind of commitment for 50 states so reliant on insular cars and planes would be a game changer. However big the United States might be, however divided about the future, revitalized railways offer an alternative way ahead. To streak across the country day or night, to see the nation pass and talk to your fellow citizens and strangers as you go: There’s surely no better time for the rediscovery and rebuilding of that American dream.
Americans have free will to take trains. Nobody is stopping you from taking a sleeper train - though the options are limited compared to Europe. But it’s not the most effective way to travel across the country. Not by a long shot.
I’ll give you some anecdotes from my personal travels. For context: I’ve visited U.S. 47 states, driven in most of them, and been a car/train/bus passenger where I didn’t rent a car.
When I worked for Leadership Institute as their Northeast Regional Field Coordinator between 2012-2016, I commuted to the region, particularly to New York City, by Amtrak. The toll rates and traffic were enough to deter me, a West Coast-born and trained driver, from making the trek north by car.
Amtrak makes sense from DC to NYC. I can go from downtown D.C. to NYC Penn Station in 4-4.5 hours. It makes less sense going from NYC to Rochester, NY via the Hudson River Valley. One-way, with stops, that trip can last 7-8 hours. By comparison, one can drive that same route in about 6 hours. When I traveled to Boston, I either took the metro within city limits or drove by car to travel to nearby stops in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine.
Out West, where I hail from, you generally fly or drive. The only time I took Amtrak was to commute from Orange County, CA to Santa Barbara, CA when I interned at the Reagan Ranch Center in summer 2010. Otherwise, you drive or fly. The roads are great and scenic to justify the road trip.
Going to Alaska, for instance, is impossible by train. Within the Last Frontier, it’s a great option for traveling between Anchorage and Fairbanks. But flying is the quickest option, whether you’re coming from Seattle or Washington Dulles.
No matter the fetishization of European trains, America’s highways are here to stay.
Driving on highways doesn't fill me, an American, with regret.
Au contraire: There's something freeing about the open road and choosing your destination - whether to a new or familiar place.
Road trips are the best way to appreciate America and her beauty.
As someone who has driven the road from Anchorage to Fairbanks and back again countless times, the Alaska Railroad is beautiful but cars are better on both time *and* money, especially if you're transporting more than one person.
Great essay, ma'am. thank you. The NYT article reminded me of a quote from Eisenhower - "Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field." It's pretty easy to sit in a cushy office in downtown New York City and complain about cars and whine about rail travel.
But if it were so popular, why has it taken decades to get rail travel in California? Why isn't there a high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and Los Angeles? Chicago and St. Louis? Houston and Dallas?