Urban Sprawl Makes Americans Fat, Study Finds

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - You drive to work, you drive your kids to school, you drive to the grocery store -- no wonder you have put on a few pounds.

U.S. researchers said on Thursday they had quantified the price of living in sprawled-out American communities and weight gain leads the list -- six pounds on average, to be precise.

Their findings, published in special issues of the American Journal of Public Health and the American Journal of Health Promotion, are aimed at urban planners, county and city councils and other groups involved in laying out communities.

"We found that U.S. adults living in sprawling counties weigh more, are more likely to be obese and are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure than are their counterparts in compact counties," Reid Ewing of the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland told reporters.

He said two-thirds of the U.S. population lives in counties covered in his group's survey.

Unlike people in old-fashioned urban centers who can walk to work, shops, and public transport, those in the spread-out communities cannot walk even if they wanted to because sidewalks and crossings are lacking and homes, schools and workplaces are far apart.

"For some people it is a 'duh' kind of issue, but it doesn't seem to be for a lot of people in important positions," Ewing said.

He said the research can be used to persuade policymakers to change zoning, funding and even lending laws to promote development that will encourage people to walk.

"If we go to a city council and say 'allowing this sprawling development ... is maybe going to hurt people's health through obesity', they are going to say 'prove it'," Ewing said.

LESS EXPENSIVE, CLEANER, MORE PLEASANT

More compact communities are less expensive -- with sprawl bringing 10 percent greater annual public service deficits and 8 percent higher housing costs, the researchers said.

Dense communities also ease pollution and allow for better social interaction, they said.

The researchers looked at U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) data on more than 200,000 people living in 448 U.S. counties in major metropolitan areas. They assessed sprawl in each county using U.S. Census Bureau (news - web sites) and other federal data.

"The average adult would be expected to weigh about six pounds (2.7 kg) more living in the most sprawling county in our sample as opposed to an adult the same age living in the most compact county," Ewing said.

The study found that people in far-flung communities walk less for leisure, but this factor did not account for all the weight difference.

"It may be as a result of the lower level of physical activity they get as part of their daily lives -- driving to work, driving to school, driving to lunch, basically driving everywhere," Ewing said.

People in such communities may drive for good reasons.

Another set of studies found that U.S. pedestrians and cyclists were much more likely to be killed or injured than Dutch and German pedestrians and cyclists.

Whether compared on a per-trip basis or by distance traveled, U.S. cyclists were three times more likely to be killed than German cyclists and six times more likely to die than Dutch cyclists, the study found.


9:44 PM | Link |   

Matthew Simmons is the CEO of the world's largest Energy Investment Bank, Simmons & Company International. It has a web site located at (http://www.simmonsco-intl.com). Its clients include Halliburton; Baker, Botts, LLP; Dynegy; Kerr-McGee; and the World Bank. Since 1993, it has underwritten or financed 18 transactions valued at more than $350 million. Of those, six were valued at more than $1 billion. Simmons is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the National Petroleum Council's Natural Gas Task Force. He has a lot to say about the Northeast power grid blackout, its causes, and what they imply for the future. He also has a lot to say about Peak Oil and Gas.

FTW interviewed Simmons via telephone from his home in Rockport, Maine on August 18, 2003

FTW: What's the most important thing you want the American people to know about Black Thursday?

SIMMONS: This blackout ought to be an incredible jolt telling us about a host of energy problems that are ultimately going to prevent any future economic growth. It's like people have been ignoring annoying phone calls and living in denial about a problem that won't go away. It's like the ghost of Enron calling. The event itself was astonishing. Senior people like Governor Pataki or the head of NERC [North American Electric Reliability Council] were asking how this could happen. But the problem was inevitable. The only thing we didn't know was when it would happen.

FTW: What did happen?

Simmons: On a large scale what happened was deregulation. Deregulation destroyed excess capacity. Under deregulation, excess capacity was labeled as "massive glut" and removed from the system to cut costs and increase profits. Experience has taught us that weather is the chief culprit in events like this. The system needs to be designed for a 100-year cyclical event of peak demand. If you don't prepare for this, you are asking for a massive blackout. New plants generally aren't built unless they are mandated, and free markets don't make investments that give one percent returns. There was also no investment in new transmission lines. Underlying all this is the fact that we have no idea how to store electricity. And every aspect of carrying capacity, from generators, to transmission lines, to the lines to and inside your house, has a rated capacity of x. When you exceed x, the lines melt. That's why we have fuse boxes and why power grids shut down. So we have now created a vicious cyclicality that progresses over time. Another problem was that with deregulation, people thought that they could borrow from their neighbor. New Yorkthought it could borrow from Vermont. Ohio thought that it could borrow from Michigan, etc. That works, but only up to the point where everyone needs to borrow at once and there's no place to go.

A second major reason is that decisions were made in the 1990s that all new generating plants were to be gas fired. We've had a natural gas summit this year and, as you know, I have been talking for some time about the natural gas cliff we are experiencing. Many thought that this winter would be deadly, and I have to say that it's just a miracle that we have replenished our gas stocks going into the cold months. This winter could have been a major disaster. We've seen a price collapse in natural gas to the five to eight dollar range (per thousand cubic feet) and the only reason that happened was throughout almost the entire summer there were only a handful of days when the temperature rose above eighty degrees anywhere. That was miraculous. It allowed us to prepare for the winter but we shouldn't be optimistic. One good hurricane that disrupts production, one blazing heat wave, one freezing winter after that and we're out of solutions.

FTW: And natural gas too?

Simmons: Well, I know you understand it, but people need to understand the concept of peaking and irreversible decline. It's a sharper issue with gas, which doesn't follow a bell curve but tends to fall off a cliff. There will always be oil and gas in the ground, even a million years from now. The question is, will you be a microbe to go down and eat the oil in small pockets at depths no one can afford or is able to drill to? Will you spend hundreds of thousands to drill a gas well that will run dry in a few months? All the big deposits have been found and exploited. There aren't going to be any dramatic new discoveries and the discovery trends have made this abundantly clear. We are now in a box we should never have gotten into and it has very serious implications. We also see the inevitable issues that follow a major blackout: no water, no sewage, no gasoline. The gasoline issue is very important. Our gasoline stocks are at near all time lows. With the blackout, more than seven hundred thousand barrels per day of refinery capacity were shut down. People were told to boil their water. So what do they do, they go to their electric stove which isn't working. What then?

FTW: Makes you wonder about France and the heat wave that has killed 5,000.

Simmons: The only reason Europewas spared a far worse blackout than what hit the USAwas that Europebarely uses air conditioning. In fact, even though Americauses a lot of air conditioning some areas have become fairly efficient in the ways they use it. Quantitatively, we use more energy because there are more of us. But air conditioning is a relatively new experience in Ontario, Canada. Until recently Ontariohad been a net energy exporter. They have a population of just over 12 million. With air conditioning in the last five years, Ontariobecame a net importer of electricity. Now, on just a normal hot summer day, Ontario's peak power use averages about 23,000 Gigawatts. Texas, with a population of 25 million, set an all time record of 60,000 Gigawatts just a week before the blackout. The difference is that except for one tiny line running into Arkansas, Texasis self-contained for electricity. It's not tied to any other users. As we saw on Black Thursday, Ottawawas part of a whole interlocking system that had no place to go but down.

FTW: So how big a factor was the weather?

Simmons: It was THE factor in my opinion. To show much weather determines power use, in the week of August 3rd, the USset an all-time national record for electricity use of 90,000 Gigawatts. The Mid-Atlantic States' use of power had jumped 29.5% over last year and 20% over just the previous four weeks. Why? The temperature had been as hot as we experienced on Black Thursday. If you want to compare it to vehicles and roadways, air conditioning is the interstate highway system and the Internet is the equivalent of SUVs. Everything that happened on August 14 started in the 17th hour. (5 PMat various local times). That's when everything is running at once: industrial, residential, and commercial. This is when demand peaks regardless of the weather. And we know that in hour 17 on that day the USexperienced all-time peak energy use. That's when the system tripped out.

FTW: So we have two basic camps saying that the problems are generating capacity and transmission lines, without addressing feedstock issues. What about the advocates for deregulation who argued that there would be more generating capacity as a result?

Simmons: History answers that one. Following the 1965 blackout when NERC was created there was a mandate that publicly owned and regulated power providers had to build new plants. Every five years, ten per cent was added to the generating base. As deregulation was implemented in the 1990s, it was argued that it would open up vast quantities of energy in neighboring states. In the first five years of the decade, only four per cent capacity was added over the entire period. In the second five years, only two per cent was added. In the summer of 1999, we had thirty consecutive power events which unleashed the single biggest construction boom in history which built 220 thousand megawatts of new plants at a capitalization cost of six to seven hundred thousand dollars per megawatt. Ninety-eight per cent of those plants were gas fired. It was decided to use solely natural gas plants for several reasons. Coal fired plants took five to seven years to build. They are very dirty environmentally and the permit process is difficult. We have built on all the available hydroelectric sites we can build on. Nuclear is unpopular and expensive. Oil fired plants are remnants of the days when oil was cheap. Those days are not coming back because Peak Oil is with us now. Besides that, oil fired power plants are about the least efficient use of a barrel of oil that I can imagine. That left natural gas and the economists mistakenly presumed there would be large supplies. But natural gas plants were built with no supplies. Synthetic contracts were used, Enron-style, to sell gas futures when the gas didn't necessarily exist.

FTW: Assuming that there was enough feed stock to run the new plants how much building are we talking about?

Simmons: Each state would need to build forty to fifty per cent excess capacity. A forty per cent cushion merely provides the chance to withstand a day of high summer heat and the chance to grow by about 3% per year for three years.

FTW: Yet even if we re-regulate there are still going to be problems with feed stock to power the plants. How serious is that?

Simmons: Someone's going to be left holding the bag big time. If natural gas consumption surges in ten days of excessive heat then it would require almost a complete shutdown of industrial consumption to compensate and protect the grid. As I have been reporting for years now, there isn't going to be enough gas to run those plants, let alone new ones.

FTW: You mean shut down the economy for ten days to keep people from cooking?

Simmons: Yes.

FTW: Everyone keeps saying that A NWR (The A rctic Natural Wildlife Reserve) is the answer if we drill there. Is it?

Simmons: ANWR is not "The Answer." However, it makes great sense to develop. Drilling there should not have a negative impact on the coastal plains of the Arctic. With great luck, it could create between 300,000 and possibly up to 1.5 million barrels of oil a day and lots of natural gas that could last a decade or two. But this does not become the sole answer. On the other hand, if ANWR is kept off limits, it becomes no answer.

FTW:What about imports of natural gas from overseas? Russia and Indonesia have huge reserves; Canada, as the Canadians are painfully aware, is almost depleted when it comes to natural gas.

Simmons: Indonesia's gas fields are very old. Its Natuna gas fields, a source of stranded gas that gets discussed all the time has 95% CO2 and apparently costs about $40 billion to develop a mere 1 bcf/day of dry gas. Russiahas four old fields that make up over 80% of their gas supply and they all are in decline. Canada's decline problems are as serious as the US.

FTW: Windmills? Solar?

Simmons: There's no way they can replace even a portion of hydrocarbon energy.

FTW:Reducing consumption?

Simmons: Reducing consumption has to happen, but many of the favorite conservation concepts make little overall difference. The big conservation changes end up being steps, like a ban on using electricity to either heat water or melt metals and instead, always using the "burner tip of natural gas". The latter is vastly more efficient, the energy savings are enormous and we need lower ceilings and smaller rooms. We need mass transit, and to eliminate traffic congestion. Finally, we need a way to keep people from using air-conditioning when the weather gets really muggy and hot at same time. The strain this puts on our grid is too overwhelming. We also must begin to use our current discretionary power during the nighttime. All of theses steps are hard to implement but they make a difference.

FTW: What is the solution?

Simmons:I don't think there is one… The solution is to pray. Pray for mild weather and a mild winter. Pray for no hurricanes and to stop the erosion of natural gas supplies. Under the best of circumstances, if all prayers are answered there will be no crisis for maybe two years. After that it's a certainty.

FTW: On that cheery note let's take a look at oil supplies.

Simmons: Currently, oil supply issues are as serious as the electrical grid. Last month the IEA(International Energy Agency) updated their database. They had for years been talking about a coming huge surge in non-OPEC supply, excluding the FSU (Former Soviet Union). It hasn't happened. We have the highest oil prices in 20 years and even great technological advances have not had a measurable impact on discovery or production.

FTW: I have recently noted the speed with which the Chad-Cameroon pipeline was built and switched on. Chad only has estimated reserves of around 900 million barrels (World consumption is I billion barrels every 12 days). I see a sense of urgency there.

Simmons: It's amazing. What's that pipeline going to pump, fifty thousand barrels per day? That figure may go up, but it's inconsequential in the long run. It's a sign of how strapped world supplies really are and that we may be finding out that we are already over the peak.

FTW: What about Iraq and Saudi Arabia? We have been following Iraq closely and all the sabotage, infrastructure damage and the pipeline bombings are actually reducing Iraqi capacity. That leaves Saudi Arabia with 25% of known reserves.

Simmons: I have for years described two camps: the economists who told us that technology would always produce new supply and the pessimists or Cassandras who told us that peak was coming in maybe fifteen or twenty years. We may be finding out that we went over the peak in 2000. That makes both camps wrong. Over the last year. I have obtained and closely examined more than 100 very technical production reports from Saudi Arabia. What I glean from examining the data is that it is very likely that Saudi Arabia, already a debtor nation, has very likely gone over its Peak. If that is true, then it is a certainty that planet earth has passed its peak of production. What that means, in the starkest possible terms, is that we are no longer going to be able to grow. It's like with a human being who passes a certain age in life. Getting older does not mean the same thing as death. It means progressively diminishing capacity, a rapid decline, followed by a long tail.

FTW: What about people like A lan Greenspan and popular writers who tell us that there is no basic problem with energy supplies? Others offer us hydrogen, which is laughed out of hand by people who have looked at its feasibility and efficiency.

Simmons: Basically they just don't get it. Some of them have gotten lazy. They were so carried away by the arguments of the economists that they stopped doing their homework. Month by month, and year by year, events are proving them systematically and thoroughly incorrect. They just don't get it. Right now, there is a deluge of stories on the wonders of hydrogen. This is another area of great confusion. Hydrogen is not a primary source of energy. For a Hydrogen Era to occur you need an abundance of natural gas, or you need to create a great deal of new power plants using coal and nuclear power. What I find so ironic about our very serious energy problems is that they started in Santa Barbara in 1969. This was where the best work was being done to create a new technological evolution in our ability to recover energy from deep water sources. Then we had a tragic spill. This gave birth to the environmental movement. It began the war between modern energy and environmental "anarchists". They have worked overtime to shut down our access to areas that might have diversified our energy supply. Had we been able to develop these areas, then we would have more options now to ensure a continuation of the economic prosperity we take so much for granted. And there is no better friend of the environment that economic prosperity.

FTW: But peak oil is peak oil, is it not? A ren't we just talking about something that would have delayed the inevitable for a few years? It would take a couple of years to drill and pipe out of A NWR but there's only a two year (total US ) supply of gas there at best, and even less oil. Then what? At the May ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) conference in Paris, I think it was you or another expert who disclosed that four out of five very expensive deep water holes were coming up dry?

Simmons: Peaking of oil and gas will occur, if it has not already happened, and we will never know when the event has happened until we see it "in our rear view mirrors."

FTW: Is it time for Peak Oil and Gas to become part of the public policy debate?

Simmons: It is past time. As I have said, the experts and politicians have no Plan B to fall back on. If energy peaks, particularly while 5 of the world's 6.5 billion people have little or no use of modern energy, it will be a tremendous jolt to our economic well-being and to our heath -- greater than anyone could ever imagine.
---------

After I ended the interview, I recalled something that I had read recently in a book called "Contraction and Convergence - The Global Solution to Climate Change." (www.gci.org.uk). It was a startling revelation that since 1950 there has been a near perfect correlation between the growth in world GDP and the emission of greenhouse gases (i.e. - the consumption of hydrocarbon energy). In an economic system that is predicated first and foremost on perpetual growth, Matt Simmons' statement that we are no longer ever going to grow took on a whole new meaning.

-- Mike Ruppert


11:36 AM | Link |   

Energy, or lack thereof, is the increasingly important story of our time. The big blackout of August 14 showed just how vulnerable and dependent we are on a steady supply of inexpensive carbon-based energy. After the lights turned out, we hopped on our bikes and rode around Brooklyn and Manhattan to observe. Gliding through gridlock and watching office refugees, Manolo Blahnik's in-hand, hoofing it back to Brooklyn over the East River bridges, it occured to me that when the energy stops flowing it does more than just stall our computers, TV's and traffic signals. It forces us to take a moment to think about what the heck we'd do with ourselves and who we'd be without all of our modern, carbon-run devices and conveniences and the vast infrastructure required to keep them powered up.

A blackout creates something of an an identity crisis for people. It makes us stop and sit quietly in the dark with ourselves. It forces us, for a moment, to confront who we are, what we do and how we'd fend for ourselves if we were forcibly unplugged from our e-mail, light bulbs, infotainment, take-out food, cell phones, driving machines and other modern day services and conveniences. I'd bet that no less than ninety-five percent of the people I watched streaming over the bridge became instantaneously obsolete the moment the juice stopped flowing. No electricity meant that their job and their ability to do their job immediately disappeared. No juice meant that every single one of those people were rendered "useless." If the juice stayed off, what would we do with ourselves? Even if you had plenty of food and water. What would you do? Who would you be?

It's clear to a lot of smart, reasonable people that we are now at the very beginning of a serious and massive global energy crisis. There is lots of evidence pointing in this direction. Many geologists believe that we reached global peak oil production in 2000, meaning that the Earth will never yield as much petroleum as it did that year. Supply will never again increase no matter what the demand. The ongoing Enron and Cheney-esque manipulations of energy markets and policy also point to the notion that the insiders realize that we're now well into the zero-sum energy end-game. We've got a pretty good idea of how big the Earth's fossil fuel pie is at this point. And we know that it's not possible for it to get any bigger. When the world's most valuable and important resource dwindles and becomes limited, it's natural that the business of it should become more competitive, vicious and secretive. As it has -- particularly in Iraq. Energy is clearly the most compelling reason for our war in Iraq. It's simply impossible for us to continue to live the American Way of Life without having a sheriff's station alongside the world's biggest remaining supply of crude. Regardless of whether you believe that's a good or bad reason to have a war, if our leaders were more honest about why we are there, it would inevitably lead to a discussion about how to plan, prepare, and organize ourselves as a post-carbon society.

As the nation that grew, sprawled, and built itself throughout the 20th century around a steady and seemingly infinite supply of inexpensive fossil fuels, America is going to feel the pain of the impending crisis more than any other country. Based on our current leadership and tenor of national dialogue, I believe it's going to be very difficult for us to face this crisis. If it were only a technological, economic, or political issue, I think we could handle it. The blackout gave us a taste that there's much more to the "energy crisis" than that. Energy is growth, mobility, modernity, and freedom. The way Americans use energy is intimately tied to the way we see ourselves as individuals and as a people. Look no further than our obsession with the automobile. The car is America. America is cars. Motorism and the lifestyle we've built around motorism is, without question, the driving force behind our impending energy crisis, global environmental problems, and war and terror in the oil-rich Middle East. Energy is life force. We call it "power." The blackout of August 14 wasn't just a crisis of the electricity grid. It was the beginning of a crisis of personal and national identity linked to the way that Americans consume energy and use power.


3:10 PM | Link |   

can have your very own Predator Drone. Coming soon to a Wal-Mart near you!


5:58 PM | Link |   

In his new book, Charlie Wilson's War, George Crile tells the story of the Texas congressman who orchestrated the CIA's war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, America's largest covert military operation ever. After hearing stories of invincible Soviet Hind helicopters decimating Afghani villages, Congressman Wilson became obsessed with shooting down the Communist "angel of death." It took a decade, billions of dollars and all kinds of intrigue, but Wilson and his CIA compadres ultimately managed to equip the mujahideen with American Stinger missiles. A heat-seeking missile that can be carried and fired by a lone man, the Stinger enabled the plucky and heroic Afghani freedom fighters to shoot down the $10 million Hind helicopters with ease. More than any other factor or tactic, the Stinger (and the CIA training and support that came along with it) is credited for the Soviet's ultimate defeat and retreat from Afghanistan.

Reading today's news of a British man arrested in Newark, New Jersey after agreeing to sell a Russian SA-18 shoulder-fired missile to an undercover FBI agent, I couldn't help but think of Charlie Wilson. Newark, New Jersey is better known to my fellow New Yorkers as EWR -- Newark "Liberty" Airport. And the SA-18 is similar to the type of rocket that was fired at an Israeli passenger plane flying out of Kenya a few months back.

When I get on a plane these days, I do a special prayer that includes a very specific mention of shoulder-fired missiles. I was doing the Shoulder Fired Missile Meditation before today's news, and now I guess I'm going to have to figure out a way to pump it up a bit. A flight attendant once told me that before take-off he does a series of deep breaths. On each exhalation he imagines himself inflating a protective bubble around the people beside him, the plane, the airport, and the entire flight path.

This bubble thing might be worth trying because, according to Crile, we and the Saudis continued to send hundreds of millions of dollars worth of high-tech weaponry to the Afghani holy warriors well into the 1990's, years after the Soviets withdrew. Not surprisingly, once the Soviets were gone, the mujahideen returned to their original warlord form. They used their new firepower to turn on each other and settle generations-old scores. After a period of instability the Taliban took over, creating a highly repressive sort of order. And by September 12th, 2001, many of the same mujahideen we secretly funded, trained and equipped throughout the 1980's -- one can certainly find their names and faces in Charlie Wilson's most treasured photo albums -- were on America's Wanted Dead or Alive List.

As much good defensive work as the FBI may be doing now (and who knows if this arrest will turn out to be legit), we spent a good part of the last twenty years ensuring that all kinds of moronic and maniacal characters had access to some of the most serious military technology around. Short of equipping commercial airliners with multi-million dollar defense systems and heavily guarding airport perimeters, there's not a whole lot we can do about someone who has a shoulder-fired rocket on American soil and is eager to try it out on a 737.

The massive secret war in Afghanistan is peanuts compared to the covert and overt action that is taking place today in the name of the War on Terror. We are fanning out around the globe to provide weapons, training and support to new allies in a host of 'stan's, 'esia's and other hotspots. The Charlie Wilson story makes one thing completely clear: The continued development and distribution of high-tech weapons and military knowledge doesn't do anything to bring us greater security. In the places where we sew weapons, we reap war. And our world is now so close-knit and interconnected, there's really no way for us to be uninvolved. If we want genuine security we need to figure out way to stop the large-scale production and distribution of high-tech weaponry. The more weapons we put out there, the more likely they will be used. And used against us.


9:22 PM | Link |   

In case you were wondering what is the vehicle-of-choice for the hip and with-it dictator du jour.

11:35 AM | Link |   

So, I just got back from another leg of my Honku book tour. I did events at two great bookstores, Politics & Prose in Washington D.C. and Malaprops in Asheville, North Carolina. The trips have been fun and all of the travel has given me lots of good, first-hand insight into the American transportation experience.

Because I planned my trip to Asheville at the last minute, flying was going to cost way too much. So, I opted to take Amtrak instead. I am someone who wants to like the train. I want our country to have a really good, high quality national commuter rail network. There's no reason why we shouldn't and lots of reasons why we should. But, I've got to say, Amtrak is totally pathetic. From the moment I called to get tickets to the last delay just minutes outside of Manhattan, the message from Amtrak was clear: We're Amtrak, and we could care less.

From New York to Washington, I road the Acela. The Acela is Amtrak's high speed express train running up and down the Eastern seaboard. You pay extra to ride it -- it basically costs the same as a plane, but it's fast and roomy and drops you off in the middle of the city. On paper, it's totally worth it. In reality, the Acela isn't fast because it doesn't leave when it's supposed to. My train pulled out of Penn Station more than an hour late. There was hardly even an announcement or anything from the Amtrak folks. The little timetable board flipped to "Delayed" and that was that. It simply felt as though a late Acela is an entirely normal daily occurrence and barely worthy of mention.

The train ride back from Greensboro, North Carolina to New York City was supposed to be a 13 hour trip, 9:40am to 10:30pm. It was two hours longer than that. The train left it's very first station, Charlotte, twenty minutes late and from there it just got later and later. The kicker came at midnight, where just outside of Newark, the last station before Manhattan, we stopped. An announcement told us that there was only one track open and three southbound trains were going to use it before we could go. We pulled in to NYC around 1am. Again, the overall vibe was, essentially: It's out of our control. There's nothing we can do. It happens all the time. Amtrak is late. Whatev.

Having had one previous experience with the Amtrak North Carolinian, I was not surprised by any of this. A couple of months ago I got off a plane at Newark Airport to discover they've got this new rail service called AirLink. I wanted to try it out. So I took this fancy monorail to a train station near the airport. There was no train schedule at the baggage claim but I figured, AirLink, there's got to be at least three or four trains an hour, right? Wrong. There was one train an hour and I had a 45 minute wait til the next one. It wasn't worth going back to the terminal via monorail to catch an expensive limo to sit in traffic for an hour. So, I paid for my New Jersey Transit ticket and waited.

A train pulled in, destination Manhattan. I tried to get on. The conductor wouldn't let me. He tells me, "This isn't New Jersey Transit, this is the Amtrak North Carolinian." I argued and begged. I pointed out that the American Civil War was fought, in part, so that New Jersey and North Carolina could work out deals around issues like this. He was unamused. So I offered to pay an additional fare to get on. By that point I was willing to do just about anything. Money talks. He let me on and the train pulled out (It was nearly empty. There seemed to be no reason not to let people on). A couple minutes later he came back to collect the fare. I asked him how much. He told me $39!!! This is about the same price as an airport limo and keep in mind that I've already paid for the now-useless NJ Transit ticket. I told him I didn't believe it could really be that much, could I see a fare schedule? I was sure $39 was a mistake. In fact, I was pretty sure that he just made up the number and was hoping that I'd pay him cash so that he could pocket the dough. He told me, "Look, I did you a favor letting you on this train." I insisted on seeing the fare in writing. He reached for his walkie talkie and started calling ahead to the police in Newark, Penn Station, the stop between the airport and Manhattan where I'd be dumped if I didn't pay...

So, from the moment I booked my train tickets, my expectations of the North Carolinian were extremely low. I brought food, reading materials, and work to do on the train and made sure that it couldn't possibly make me late to anything. Truly, the lousy service didn't really matter to me. I tend to think we Americans are mostly spoiled and somewhat insane in our expectations and valuation of total convenience above all else. So, I'm not writing this to bitch about the service.

I'm writing because it all just strikes me as a real shame. The train could be (and actually was for a long time) a relatively pleasant, inexpensive, community-friendly, and energy efficient way for Americans to get around the country. And even if we've lost our collective memory about how decent the train was, we can look at other countries around the world and see that the train is still a great way to travel with all kinds of social and econcomic benefits. Yet, because of our obsession with the automobile and all of the money we throw into an increasingly dysfunctional, destructive and obsolete motorist infrastructure, we've essentially relegated our national rail system to Third World status.

Traveling Amtrack, I couldn't help but think of my trip last year to Germany where the timetables on the platforms tell you that the train is going to be rolling in :20, :40, or :60 seconds late. Twenty seconds late! I bet the conductor of the North Carolinian would find that just absolutely hilarious.

1:27 PM | Link |