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Sunday, May 1st, 2011

America’s Transport Infrastructure Life in the Slow Lane

Author:    
Source:     The Economist (U.K.)
Publication Date:     Apr 28th 2011
 Link: America’s Transport Infrastructure Life in the Slow Lane
Stephan:   This is an excellent analysis of the U.S. transportation system, a view from outside of the U.S., and it is very sad. When I was growing up American railroads were the envy of the world. For generations before that they had played a central role in knitting the states into a nation. When President Eisenhower began the interstate system it was reported in every country. The American telephone system was beyond compare. But we stopped caring. Don't you think it is important to ask how we got from that to where were are today? Was this a good decision? What would American transportation look like if the system was designed to produce a healthful and convenient environment, and the task was how to make a profit from that? Do you have any doubt that many people would figure out how to do it, and get very rich in the process. But society has to say what it wants, not take what it can get.

On Friday afternoons, residents of Washington, DC, often find a clear route out of the city as elusive as a deal to cut the deficit. Ribbons of red rear-lights stretch off into the distance along the highways that radiate from the city’s centre. Occasionally, adventurous southbound travellers experiment with Amtrak, America’s national rail company. The distance from Washington to Raleigh, North Carolina (a metropolitan area about the size of Brussels) is roughly the same as from London’s St Pancras Station to the Gare du Nord in Paris. But this is no Eurostar journey.

Trains creep out of Washington’s Union Station and pause at intervals, inexplicably, as they travel through the northern Virginia suburbs. In the summer, high temperatures threaten to kink the steel tracks, forcing trains to slow down even more. Riders may find themselves inching along behind a lumbering freight train for miles at a time, until the route reaches a side track on which the Amtrak train can pass. The trip takes six hours, well over twice as long as the London-Paris journey, if there are no delays. And there often are.

America, despite its wealth and strength, often seems to be falling apart. American cities have suffered a rash […]

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