WORLD NEWS TRUST: Blind Spot (James Kunstler)

[Tace]

James Kunstler -- Clusterfuck Nation

I happened to be flying into Minneapolis the very day that Northwest Airlines announced its merger with Delta -- Delta to be the more senior (more equal) partner -- in effect, to absorb Northwest and run its operations. Many observers are not optimistic that the merger will rescue these companies in any case, since both airlines are financial basket-cases, but it's a sort of last-ditch effort to save them both.
It was less than great news up around Minneapolis, Northwest's corporate headquarters. A lot of people I talked to were anxious that Delta would cut service to a lot of little cities in the upper Great Lakes and northern prairie region, places like Duluth, Grand Forks, Green Bay, Traverse City and many other towns. Instead of one or two flights a day, they may end up with one or two a week, or none at all, they feared.

The Northwest pilots were none too pleased, either, because Delta was making noises about their own pilots seniority counting for more than Northwest's pilot's seniority in terms of preferred assignments and scheduling. In fact, the Northwest pilots were so pissed off they threatened to scuttle the merger.

That part of the country is a big region of wide open spaces Things are very far apart. You wouldn't want to drive a car from Des Moines to Rapid City, even if gasoline was a good bit less than the $3.50 a gallon it is now. Driving around the prairie is especially tedious -- and dangerous because of the tedium. The landscape is boring. The roads are dead straight and mostly dead flat.

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[papau]

1. I took Amtrack from Montpelier VT to the Mayo Clinic in MN 20 yrs ago - it was a nice trip and

It took 20 some hours but you arrive fresh and relaxed and indeed well fed with memories of pleasant conversations and card games and meals. Driving to Mayo gives you the Midwest's multi-hour straight roads with few if any hills - the kind of driving that easily puts you to sleep.


I am sorry to hear that Amtrak's Empire Builder is now the only train east to Minn. He is absolutely right about our forgetting about maintaining our infrastructure.

[Miss Authoritiva]

3. Yep.

Sure, there are probably diehard drivers who will never be converted, but if you can get people to take a decent train trip, they usually like it. And there certainly isn't the tension that you find in airports and on planes. Train time is different.

[Miss Authoritiva]

2. Now get this: We are sleepwalking into a transportation crisis

In other words, this region of the country has next-to-zero railroad service. Can we pause a moment here to ask: exactly how far does America have its head up its ass? Do you get the picture? Can you connect the dots? The airline industry is dying and absolutely no thought is being given to how people will get around this big country -- except to make the stupid assumption that we can just drive our cars instead.... In point of fact, these are exactly the kind of trips that would be better served by rail, anyway -- the towns that are less than five hundred miles apart. The travel time between trains and planes would be comparable, considering the two hours or so that you have to add to every airplane trip because of all the security crap, not to mention the delays.

I have been bitching about this for decades. Granted, I am biased -- I am a train fan. But just look at a map of the United States. This is an ideal country for trains: bullet trains, auto trains, commuter trains, scenic route trains. Some of the tracks and rights-of-way are still there, and not surprisingly they parallel (pretty much) what later became the interstate highway system, especially the east-west routes.

Maybe the high price of gasoline will at least bring about long- and middle-distance auto trains. That seems to be an ideal hybrid for Americas: take the train but bring your car along.

[angrycarpenter]

4. I read in a SF book

About a future where criminals are put to work in galley trains where they pedal all day to propel passengers from one city to another. That is what we will have after we have wasted the last drops of gas there are.