Trains and the Midwest (A First Attempt at "Interesting" Content)
A few weeks ago, my mother was calling and complaining again that I spend too much time working and studying and not enough time "getting out." I tried to convince her that, given my disgraceful efficiency in completing my goals, this could not possibly be the case. My rationalization fell on deaf ears as she continued her chiding. Soon after, a friend of mine was complaining that I had not yet visited at the University of Missouri, as I said I would. People did not seem very pleased with my activities, and I sensed the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. So, I immediately purchased a train ticket to Jefferson City, MO for Labor Day weekend for the fair price of $89. Given my deteriorating financial situation from the sub-prime mortgage fallout and the unexpectedly high tax withholding that threatened to turn my summer earnings into summer losses, it might not have been a very wise financial decision, but at least it promised to be an enjoyable adventure.
So off I was last Satuday morning, walking across Washington Park to catch the 7:30 AM green line El to the Loop. Emerging from the blue line subway, I walked the couple blocks to Union Station downtown. The most striking feature of train stations is their monolithic size and beautiful designs, particularly in comparision to their passenger flux. Chicago's Union Station, with its vaguely neoclassical architecture, is no exception. Walking in, I found a spectacular cavernous room, but it was surprisingly devoid of passengers. Instead of travelers, I found a Mercedes-Benz auto show, with a lot of rather wealthy-looking people labeled with nametags. Indeed, I wondered if I had found the correct place. It turned out that I had, but the bulk of the useful part of the station lay in a renovated and modernized (and distinctively more ugly) section of the station.
As the train slowly inched out of the underground terminal and out of the imposing mass of Chicago's skyline, I found myself noticing the superiority of train travel in comparison to travel by plane or automobile. Security is lax and boarding is quick, the seats are enormous, there is a copious array of power outlets for cell phones and computers, one can wander around at will, and the crowds are usually small. Although I didn't indulge myself, even the cafe car appeared to sell appetizing food, albeit at slightly inflated prices. According to wikipedia, the Amtrak trains also use about 2/3 of the energy per mile in comparison to planes or automobiles. The only downside of train travel, of course, is that it is slow: my meditation on the virtues of train travel were abruptly interrupted when the conductor announced that the trip to St. Louis, MO would take 5.5 hours. Tacking on an additional 2.5 hours to travel from St. Louis, MO to Jefferson City, put my total travel time at 8+ hours.
My family and I have been on a lot of road trips all over the West in our history. We've driven from the Bay Area to Sun Valley, ID, from Portland, OR to Salt Lake City, UT, from LA to Salt Lake, and more. Spending a lot of time in the back seat of a car, one can read a lot, play stupid games, or sleep, but invariably one spends a great deal of time watching the scenery pass by. Taking the freeways around the West, one soon realizes that the dominant urban scenery is a hideous and homogeneous brand of suburbia. Freeways in the West are uniformly flanked by the same collection of cheap, worthless shops, like Wal-Mart and Taco Bell, and by the same arrays of cookie-cutter houses with unnaturally green lawns. As you probably already knew or could guess, there is a bit of connection between the two. Freeways permitted cities to expand out of urban cores into low density suburban swaths. Mass production of houses enabled a cheap supply to meet the strong demand fueled by white flight, etc., etc. Crappy chain stores somehow fit into that mix. But the key point is rather simple: transportation fueled a development model, albeit a generally ugly one that necessitates too much driving for my taste.
The same is true for trains. Riding through the suburbs of Chicagoland, then the exurbs, and finally the endless corn fields and small towns, I had the sense that I had been transported to 1940 or 1950. Every small town we passed had a surprisingly interesting collection of shops and architecture that could have easily served as the inspiration for Disneyland's Main Street, USA. Like freeways, passenger rail had created its own development model of medium-density development accessible by trains and foot. The decline of rail since 1950 just meant that all this development was stuck in a time warp.
As I was noticing this, I also started noticing that I was only 1.5 hours into my trip. It is a shame that the US hasn't built the same sort of high-speed rail infrastructure that exists in Europe. Rail would be significantly more viable here if the trains were faster. Perhaps it would not be economically efficient in our much larger country, but a little bit of Googling indicates that it would be more environmentally efficient. My guess is that it might also cause urban development to be a bit more interesting, convenient, and "human" than suburbia currently is.
When I finally arrived, the rest of my trip was very good. People at the University of Missouri appear to spend a surprising amount of time frequenting upscale restaurants (which shockingly do exist in central Missouri--probably even more than in Hyde Park) and bars (apparently they do not check ID there). Though living in such a fashion for more than a few of weeks would have probably left me bankrupt (remember fallout in the stock market from subprime mortgage?) and full of antipathy toward the establishment, it was amusing for a weekend (though I must admit that bars aren't really my "thing"). We were also able to take a foray into the more rural regions, which were surprisingly pleasant. One can very much envision Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn dashing around the woods of the Ozarks playing cowboys and indians, or setting out on their raft pretending to be pirates.
