Those of us who take a diuretic every day know what it means to be in a hurry. If stranded far from appropriate facilities, a spaceship would be about right to get us to indoor plumbing.
Most of us think we’re always in a hurry, but to a large extent, that is a conceit with little basis in fact. For instance, the editor at Banker & Tradesman runs through the newsroom, screaming, “where are the columns, where are the columns” – even when we are still minutes away from some silly deadline.
Yes, yes, the home inspections in anticipation of sale are supposed to be done at the speed of light, and mortgages are to be granted faster than a Massachusetts politician raises taxes. Everyone is in a hurry, but no one knows quite why.
Neurotic, day-trading kinds of stock investors may be in a hurry, but they just sit there, staring at the screen.
This is the strangest aspect of the fervor for a “high-speed” train to rocket us from here to there and everywhere. Are we in a sufficient enough hurry to get to Portland, Maine, to justify spending $47 trillion on improvements to existing train service, which is apparently too pokey?
If in our choo-choo adventures through the Northeast Corridor, we can shave five minutes or 30 minutes, would that change behavior? Again, if the money were coming out of our pockets, individually, rather than in the fuzzy aggregate of government “investment,” would we willingly cough up big bucks for the thrill of it all?
A Southern Feast
The feeding frenzy in the Northeast was prompted in part by the wise decision of Florida’s governor to turn down his state’s share of the high-speed booty, designed to get you from Tampa to Orlando a wee bit faster than you could, already. Transportation planners noted that those two cities are simply too close together to justify the expense of the new train service – or to entice sufficient riders to bother.
That is a lesson for the high-speed train enthusiasts in the United States. The remarkable high-speed train service in Europe is intended to transport you long distances between large metropolitan areas. That’s why it makes sense. That’s why it works, in a heavily subsidized kind of way. In the Northeast Corridor, the cheerleaders are touting the benefit that will accrue from high-speed service between Hartford and Springfield. Oh, well.
Other cheerleaders suggest that high-speed train service among major labor markets will help the bedraggled factory towns rebound – but one can’t think about the reality too hard, without having doubts. In a best-case scenario, the factory-town refugees could speed into the Boston-Cambridge colossus, looking for factories that aren’t there. The alternative? Will the snooty, college-educated Boston-Cambridge types travel at warp-speed to Lawrence and New Bedford, because they can get there so much faster? What will they do, after the train arrives?
Whether justified or not, these scenarios are far in the future. In the short term, the high-speed train mania is an excuse to bring in the bulldozers and hire on some blue-collar types, who promise to vote for Democrats, in return for being given a shovel and a paycheck.
High-speed train? Well, right now, let’s repair the Merrimack River Bridge, so that when the sleek, new speed-of-light train comes flying over some day, it will have a safe, smooth trip.
What would be reassuring to see in all this is the citizenry of America, the presumed customer for high-speed train service, marching in the streets, waving banners in support of this transportation magic that would transform America into the Garden of Eden.
What was it that President Barack Obama said? “Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination.”
Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Unless, of course, one of those towns you whisked through at 100 miles per hour is where you actually wanted to go, as a tourist or business commuter. Or, that the “public transportation” on the other end is unreliable.
Or, that where you want to go is somewhere other than where Obama believes that you should go – on public transportation, just blocks from your destination.
