"It's Delayed"

I almost bought a train ticket from New York to Boston today.  But in the end I opted to fly.   I took some time to think it all through.  I was looking forward to riding up along the New Haven Line, past my hold home in Harrison, and beyond New Haven where everything would roll by with only vague familiarity.   But time’s a convincing taskmaster:  I could leave later and arrive earlier with the flight, even though the train station was much closer than the airport and the train itself was the fastest express train they had.   As I considered my choice I reckoned that familiarity, as much as anything won the day.   There were too many unknowns about the train and as we all know, America doesn’t do much to build up convenience around its train transport networks. 

I can remember taking that Amtrak the other way, from Boston into NYC and going straight to the bathroom with a friend.  We locked the door, and made the trip for free.  Upon arrival my friend wrote “AMSCAM” with soap in the mirror.  I didn’t think that was particularly good form, as I recall.   Naturally averse to provoking fate, unnecessarily.

We rode the train from Montreal down to Poughkeepsie a few years back and that was a pleasant Amtrak ride.  The food was a compromise, and the train rumbled rather than sped, but the view was wonderful in winter.  But that same year, my niece got an Amtrak ticket rather than the commuter rail, down into New York and she waited and waited and waited on the track.  No one could tell her anything intelligent: “It’s delayed.”  One always thinks of the authoritarian quip about trains running on time.   Why does a train arrive hours late?  Human error?  The engineer didn’t show up for work?   Technical challenges?   I had a three-hour train breakdown once on the ride from Dakar to Bamako.  But that was Senegal and I cut them some emerging-economy slack.

Unlike the commuters in West Africa or the North East of America, I live in the developed world where you an travel the distance of Boston to New York in ninety minutes.  Imagine that for a moment.  We don’t even bother to imagine because it would take focus and sacrifice and leadership beyond what anyone can imagine is realistic.   It will be a crisis, I suspect that will engender such a change, such a rebuild. 

Tuesday, 05/09/17