From time to time I think about visiting colleagues in Chicago, but as I have written elsewhere, flying in what Dear American Airlines author Jonathan Miles referred to as “one of those ’streamlined’ contraptions roughly the size and shape of an econo-model dildo” that serve for regional air travel is right out. As such, I would like to take the choo-choo. Not only do I prefer train travel emotionally, but also aesthetically–it’s a far more civilized experience in all aspects.

In thinking about this today, I happened across a vintage poster, 1930s I think, advertising New York-Chicago service on the famed 20th Century Limited, gone, alas since 1967. The poster advertised a 16-hour trip. Today, Amtrak runs one New York-Chicago train, the Lake Shore Limited. The quickest time offered: 19.5 hours. Yes, you could get there faster in 1930 than you can in 2009. A properly designed and implemented system using Amtrak’s Acela trains could do the deal in perhaps 6.5 hours, which might just be competitive with air travel. Parenthetically, if we were talking about a route in Japan served by one of the Shinkansen lines, could do the trip in a little over five hours.

The Shinkansen trains bop along at about 180 mph, but as Tom Vanderbilt writes in the article linked above, “220 mph would be phenomenal, but we would also do well to simply get trains back up to the speeds they traveled at during the Harding administration.” According to Vanderbilt, rail capacity peaked in 1930 and has been falling ever since, with the result that right now we have the same amount of track that served the America of 1881.

As we look for projects that will (1) put people to work, (2) improve our infrastructure and economic competitiveness in the future, and (3) make us environmentally cleaner, there are few goals more desirable than a nationwide network of high-speed rail. One of the prerequisites would be a lot of digging, as you can’t have high-speed rail at grade–you need a series of trenches and tunnels. This is as basic as work can get in this age, and there are no doubt many who would be eager to sign up.

Indirectly via Paul Krugman.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 5:04 pm and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.