Maybe kids will start asking for train sets again
We no longer see the modern world through the image of the train, but we continue to live in the world the trains made. For any trip under ten miles or between 150 and 500 miles in any country with a functioning railway network, the train is the quickest way to travel as well as, taking all costs into account, the cheapest and least destructive. What we thought was late modernity—the post-railway world of cars and planes—turns out, like so much else about the decades 1950–1990, to have been a parenthesis: driven, in this case, by the illusion of perennially cheap fuel and the attendant cult of privatization. The attractions of a return to “social” calculation are becoming as clear to modern planners as they once were, for rather different reasons, to our Victorian predecessors. What was, for a while, old-fashioned has once again become very modern.
"The attractions of a return to “social” calculation are becoming as clear to modern planners ..."
ReplyDeleteYou have greater faith than I! It appears to me (but I don't get out much) that the impetus is not toward rationality and what works but toward a return to Medieval systems. You know, a permanent 1-2% total elite and everybody else is a serf or in service (meaning the privilege of working inside the great estate home). Obviously, this isn't specific to rail - just a comment on mindset.
*I would love to take a train to Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta, Charleston, New York, etc. Just think of the convenience and relative safety not to mention the attendant business that would grow around rail travel.
I certainly don't understand cross-country trucking when rail freight could move the product and short haul trucking could deliver it to the consumer. But, as I said, I don't get out much so there are lots of things I don't understand.
Jay in N.C.
Cross-country trucking makes sense in some situations. For example, if I ship a car across country, it's loaded onto a carrier with several other vehicles. The truck is able to make stops at different locations far more easily than a train. The truck can bring each car to its final destination, while, unless all the cars behind shipped were going to one place, wouldn't be possible with a train.
ReplyDeleteI'd imagine there are number of goods that fall into this category - household possessions moved by moving companies, for example.
I've never examined the transportation industry closely. That said, I'd agree with you, Jay, that it doesn't seem to make much sense financially to move most goods cross country by truck when rail is available.
Perhaps the extra labor costs involved with short-haul loading and unloading makes it economically unsound.