March 24, 2008
Just in case citizens hadn't noticed, 2007, the year "Train Time" was published, was marked by the convergence of three major crises: an infrastructure crisis, heralded by a major report by the Urban Land Institute documenting a $3.5 trillion dollar backlog for repair, which noted that auto-centric transportation systems will have trouble meeting future transportation needs and punctuated by the August 1st collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis; a Global Warming Crisis where the melting at the poles is arriving ahead of schedule and Dr. James Hansen, dean of GW scientists, has lowered the triggering threshold for bad events kicking in from the 450-550 range to 350 ppm of CO2, which we have already exceeded; and an intensifying crisis in US and world financial markets, driven by a bursting housing bubble but spread dramatically by the risky new financial architecture that even the architects don't seem to understand very well. (And oil prices pushed to record highs, staying over 100 dollars per barrel well into early 2008.)
The rumbles of impending change - and their visual clues as well, are being detected by some other very acute observers. John R. Stilgoe, a Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard, and author, most recently, of a book "Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States Landscape (Univ. of Virginia Press, 2007), is a popular lecturer whose unconventional courses teach students to see in their surroundings what their too casual first glances gloss over. He also has a reputation of being one of the nation's great repositories of knowledge on American railroads in their heyday years, 1880-1935. Some of that knowledge was made public in his Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene (1983, Yale University Press). In Train Time, we are given glimpses of what busy Americans stuck in traffic along both coasts often miss: the venture capitalists and real estate investors jotting down their notes in long abandoned railroad rights of ways - in coastal Massachusetts, for example. Rental cars and Texas accents are encountered in Greenbush, MA and Stilgoe ends up in a "cross-examination" that tells him that their interest is many years and many miles from where they are standing, but is based on yet to be revitalized rail lines. Stilgoe is not on a nostalgia trip, however, despite his tremendous knowledge of the old system, and he reminds readers that "replicating the past is foolish, but the possibility of welding the best of the past to the most-choice components of the present makes the study of places like Greenbush well worthwhile."(Page 41). In keeping with the theme and his preference for one word Chapter titles, this one is called "Whisper."
Another Chapter, "Express," reminds readers just how efficient the fast mail trains once were, even compared to contemporary services: "A two-cent stamp on a letter mailed in New York before 5:00 on any business day would buy next-day delivery in Chicago...Canton...Lima...and Fort Wayne too." (Page 152). Private investors today, looking at the plight of first class mail and small packages, airport and major corridor congestion, ask how the old system managed to do it.
Although the general tone and style of writing in Train Time demands very close reader attention, there are brief portions of the Preface and Introduction that deliver the message of the return of the train with the force of a locomotive. Speaking of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a new train location that also caught my attention, he notes that "Albuquerque might seem an unlikely city to institute commuter rail service, but some of the most aggressive railroad reincarnation happens where city councils suddenly abandon hope in highways. In Atlanta, St. Louis and other automobile-centric cities, politicians are initiating feasibility studies and rail-equipment manufacturers are soliciting orders. The Train is returning, an economic and cultural tsunami about to transform the United States." (Page xi). A good portion of the book is centered on the freight rail industry, and takes readers away from the congested coasts to more inland locations, ones also poorly served by the major hub-obsessed airline industry. So the physical locus of change may surprise quite a few people, witness the discussions of the Lynchburg, Virginia region and remote parts of Maine, where state officials are busy laying the rail lines for the future and successfully lobbying Amtrak for increased service. Here's how Stilgoe lays out this image of impending change:
"When the railroad returns, not if, it will not only transform the half-forgotten jewels that lie along the nation's obscure operating railroad routes but also reshape regions far from existing tracks. Return will alter everyday life more dramatically than the arrival of personal computers, Internet connections, or cell phones. Return will remake the United States economy in ways that private-sector savants already anticipate. However difficult it is to imagine a grass-grown railroad track becoming a high-speed, heavily trafficked route, it is still more difficult to imagine grass growing through the pavement of interstate highways. But a least some people with imagination have made the intellectual leap...whether or not they know it, millions of Americans live in an economy waiting for the train..." (Page 14).
Since his book is filled with descriptions of encounters, by phone and field, with "deep-pocketed, long-term" investors looking at rail, especially freight rail lines, his handling of freight rail's future would seem to be somewhat at odds with the financial picture presented in other forums by the I-95 Coalition, which has portrayed freight rail as not being able to raise enough capital in the private markets to make the improvements needed to deal with its congestion problems and outdated infrastructure. This discrepancy can be explained by Stilgoe's main focus away from the worst of the auto- congested coasts where aging rail infrastructure and real estate costs make expansion and rehabilitation very expensive - unless old abandoned lines can be reclaimed.
Stilgoe has sensed the twilight of one transportation age and the beginnings of a new one, even if his emphasis is more upon freight rail than passenger rail. In this reviewer's opinion, for passenger rail, as the demand grows and the economic and environmental storms converge, the inadequate public philosophy which has financially starved the public's transportation infrastructure since 1980 cannot hold. Yet conventional politics is unable to deal with the financial scale of the problem, which is, in reality, more a matter of ideological scale than objective fiscal scale. Sometimes it takes great economic storms to create the tidal surge necessary to lift policy changes over the sand-bars of old ideas.
John Stilgoe is thinking ahead, and he documents the private rail investors who are doing so as well. At this point, the private rail investors seem to be ahead of public transportation policy, and especially public funding. The book has lots of examples of affluent citizens pushing for public rail transportation solutions to their nightmare commutes and desire to access remote vacation areas. How many readers have noted - or read about the private rail cars tacked onto the back of Amtrak Trains - a look back to an earlier Gilded Age from our own 21st century version. It's gems of observation and information like this that make Stilgoe's Train Time must reading for citizens and policy makers concerned with where we are headed - and who want to make sure that public transportation policy serves the broader public good. That may or may not correspond with where private investors and powerfully connected citizens want to take us.
William R. Neil
