I regularly ponder trains, primarily America’s relative lack thereof. My pondering hit a decided uptick this now completed holiday season due, in no small part, to the annoyance, inflexibility, and environmental costs of that so-called miracle of flight and the indignities imposed by the TSA.

When I consider flight versus rail, I very much want to vote with my dollars, and would vote in favor of rail but for the unfortunate reality that uneven federal subsidies of air over rail cost me the one thing a law student cannot afford: time.

This holiday I flew before the snow, and returned to DC for the last week where we existed in a happy little snowless bubble. At the time of my travel I only pondered the annoyance of flying (the one suitcase I shared with my fiancé weighed fifty-one pounds at the airport) and wished that the Amtrak to Boston took a few less hours than it does. Oh, for high-speed rail that would transport me to New England in three hours! We have the technology, just not the infrastructure.

I wish for better rail because whenever I have to fly I think about the indignities perpetuated by the TSA, a general indignation that began years ago with the requirement of removing my shoes to walk on dirty floors barefoot, and so I regularly wish rather forlornly for high-speed rail. Le sigh. Perhaps that’s a very personal and rather ill conceived conceit, given that were rail to actually become in vogue, terrorists and the TSA would probably show up too.

Yet, after an annoyingly petty incident involving an apparently bitter-at-life TSA employee at DCA randomly fluffing through my belongs before the x-ray had a go, then inexplicably tossing about and crushing my nicest hat between the bins for no apparent reason other than sheer boredom and spite, I am in more of a mood than ever to pout about the lack of reasonable alternatives to air travel.

My reasons for unhappiness thus are fully formed far before any thought of digging into the civil liberties questions raised by the newly implemented backscatter scans that I have yet to endure. That money pit is a different question for a different day, though perhaps we may all have some small comfort in knowing that, as the Washington Post reported on December 31, sixteen national airports have dumped TSA in no small part due to their lack of a “personal touch” in favor of private contractors. The DC area airports are considering the same. They’ll probably still backscat, but hopefully with somewhat improved manners.

Before and beyond the nightmare of the overly and soullessly bureaucratic TSA’s newly imposed authority, there are other drawbacks to flying. We all know the environmental costs are not insignificant, and who has ever really discussed,
say, ethanol-based jet fuel or electric 757s… How long can we continue to fly so close to the sun before we run out of fuel? In our lifetimes the question may seem moot, and yet for the lifetime of the infrastructure we invest in now, that is a growing concern. And what if we had other options that were easier, just as fast, and which would neither be prone to falling out of the sky nor be deterred by a little bit of snow?

I heard, through Facebook mainly, that, unable to locate a transportation miracle, many law students were stranded by snow, their planes grounded and unable to depart. Then, due to already fully booked flights airlines were unable to
accommodate re-bookings for seemingly endless days. One friend even had a flight rescheduled to leave early amidst all the commotion such that they missed it. A handful of people eventually made multiple-day, rental car drives just to be on time for classes, dedication for which they ought be commended.

Because as much as everyone absolutely loves seeing their families for the holidays, of course, a great many people just wanted to go home once all their holiday traditions were well spent. If America had greater rail infrastructure, even given all the snow they might have been able to do so.

Rail is not only plowable and able to withstand a few inches of snow, but there is technology to make snowfall even less of a big deal. The Japanese Tōkaidō Shinkansen, the bullet train between Tokyo and Shin-Ōsaka, has hot water sprinklers to combat heavy snow. And in heavy snow regions many industrial rail lines simply cover some of their tracks with inexpensive sheds. If we simply choose to invest in rail in meaningful ways, we can overcome a lot of current
obstacles. We have the technology, just not the infrastructure.

Amtrak unveiled a vision for a high-speed rail between Boston and DC this past fall. The project is still just a twinkle in urban planners’ and engineers’ eyes, as others gawk at the needed funding to implement the project. And the project is criticized for being rather pathetic by global standards. We are way behind the curve here.

California is committing to the line the population voted in back in 2008, to the tune of $5.5 billion. That number, given the typical law student salary, may seem large(ish). But consider, this year, the DOT’s budget estimate for the Federal Aviation Administration is a little under $16.5 billion while the Federal Railroad Administration is a minuscule $2.9 billion. Are we building major new infrastructure for air travel? I haven’t even clicked to open the budgets that regulate highway spending, because that rabbit hole is deep and depressing.

As we ever so slowly wake up to the still new century’s challenges of energy crisis and global environmental concerns, we need to right our wrongs. The longer we wait to build modern rail systems, the farther behind we will be and the more costly it will be to correct. Those costs have all the potential to come in the forms of not just dollars, but increased oil spills, more planes falling from the sky, fewer and fewer civil liberties, ever more entrenched aversions to rail, and continually worsening tracks of existing rail infrastructure.

Going big for rail is a shift in perspective. In America, culturally, cars apparently mean freedom and flight is still a modern marvel. Trains by comparison are outdated and passé; besides, we don’t like to look back. But a sure sign of maturity, be it of a person or a society, is learning from mistakes and learning to right previous wrongs. Old ideas are not wrong for being old.

Instead, retro can be in vogue, and it can be a new paradigm if the fundamentals are sound. It is time that we wake up and join the rest of the modern world. It is time to invest in high-speed rail.