All countries with passenger trains also have highways

By M.S.

BECAUSE I wanted to have an all-transportation blogging day, I'm just going to note Ezra Klein's sensible response to George Will's weird column a few days ago arguing that people who like trains hate individualism and freedom:

I come from Southern California. We have a lot of cars down there and not much in the way of alternative transit options. Driving is a nightmare, as the streets are overloaded. Living in Washington has been a vast improvement for me: The subways and Amtrak take me where my car has trouble going, and I use my car for the errands and travels that suit its strengths. And as long as my tax dollars are going to subsidize transportation networks, I'd like them to subsidize a sensible transportation network such as Washington's, not the endless traffic that I escaped when I moved away from Los Angeles.

Conversely, I come from Washington, DC, and I'd just like to add a couple of things. First, countries that have fantastic rail transportation networks also have roads and highways, and people there value their cars a lot. The Netherlands is blanketed with intercity rail, high-speed rail, trams, and a couple of subway systems, not to mention buses, probably the world's most extensive bike lane system, and the odd ferry and canal barge. Yet car-ownership rates are high as well, highways are not noticeably less extensive than in the northeastern United States, and the country is not full of anti-car conformists who hate freedom; indeed it just had provincial elections in which the Christian Democrats (CDA) ran on a highway-building platform under the slogan "The more CDA, the fewer traffic jams." Also, speed limits are frequently 120 kph, which is near 80 mph and thus higher than limits on most American highways. My experience driving in France is that highways there these days are also newer, better, less crowded and faster than those in the northeastern United States. China is another example of a country that both loves trains and is rapidly losing its mind in a newfound love affair with cars. Highways and railways don't come free, you have to pay taxes and tolls for them, but the assumption that train lovers hate cars is just not borne out by people in train-loving, car-loving countries.

The second point is that Washington, DC's rail network is still nowhere near extensive enough. Outside of a few downtown neighbourhoods, you really can't get around the city without a car, and even there the density (in terms of how close stations are to each other, and in terms of how much stuff can be packed in close to the stations due to height-density restrictions) is too low. The plan to bring in trams is a good sign, but the fact that traffic jams in upper Northwest have gotten vastly worse since my youth testifies to the need for a subway spur along upper Connecticut Avenue, even at the risk of turning some residents of Chevy Chase into mindless totalitarian peons.

The final point is that American car owners are not, in this century, individualistic in their driving or car-owning behaviour. Indian and Israeli car owners are individualistic in their driving behaviour. And there was a period when many Americans were individualistic in their car-owning behaviour. It looked like this:

But the people who owned cars in that fashion probably don't share George Will's political predilections, and may even be train-loving socialists.

(Photo credit: Marshal Astor, via Flickr)