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rfmcdonaldShilpa Kameswaran's speculation at Open Democracy applies equally to Canada, sadly.
Or the route from Toronto to Montreal along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence?
A standard explanation of the marginality of passenger rail in North America as a consequence of highly dispersed patterns of population distribution which make rail not that advantageous, perhaps coupled with complaints about Amtrak's passenger relations, would work. This?
What say you?
Determined to explore the North American rail networks and to understand why there never are sighs of the slightest enthusiasm to partake in train journeys in the United States, I set off for a whole week on Amtrak’s historic and most admired long train routes – The California Zephyr and the Coast Starlight.
The tapering trapezium of the John Hancock tower diminished on the Chicagoan skyline this January as my train pulled out of the Union Station in downtown Chicago.
Making a journey from Chicago, Illinois across North-America to Emeryville, California covering 3,924 kilometers in 52hours on the ‘California Zephyr’ was for me the most hassle-free mode of continent exploration.
Originating in the mid-western city of Chicago the Zephyr passes westwards through the states of Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California. The passenger train route of the ‘California Zephyr’ started in 1949 is the eighth longest train route in the world and one of America’s most scenic, second only to Amtrak’s ‘Coast Starlight’ which sprints 2,216 kilometers along the Pacific ocean from Southern California to Oregon and Washington State covering the west coast's entire length.
Yet, shockingly three-quarters of my Superliner train all through both journeys was unoccupied, more shockingly, the sleeper-roomette and dining car services were first-class plush and fantastic and most shockingly an overwhelming thirty-six of the forty American peers I spoke with at the University of Chicago had never before heard of Amtrak’s ‘California Zephyr’ or ‘Coast Starlight’ all along while growing up in sub-urban America. What they had heard of were the shorter train routes and the dilapidated Amtrak stations at the little towns on these interior routes.
Why might a locomotive that lustfully loops around the upper Colorado River valley in the Rocky Mountains, the Wasatch Mountains, the Pequop Mountains and the Sierra Nevada mountains through forty odd tunnels be so insignificant and infamous?
Or the route from Toronto to Montreal along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence?
A standard explanation of the marginality of passenger rail in North America as a consequence of highly dispersed patterns of population distribution which make rail not that advantageous, perhaps coupled with complaints about Amtrak's passenger relations, would work. This?
The real reasons may have to do with the real overriding philosophy of ‘individualism’ and the ‘indestructible importance of the individual’ on which the entire nation has been built brick by brick for generations. The real notions of the individual against nature, the individual’s conquest, the individual’s adventure, the individual’s unstoppable power of exploration, the individual’s immeasurable power to define leisure at her/his will, the individual’s pride in his/her personal exclusivity which have been reiterated and reconfirmed in recurring frequency by the media, the arts, the entertainment and most significantly by science and technology in North America surely and stably add up to why the idea of scuttling and scampering in a nine compartment passenger train with hundreds of other fellow passengers is unbearable to the average American who wants his holiday to be solely exclusive and not shared.
American capitalism’s precious beliefs of positioning the ‘individual choice’ above the ‘collective communal choice’ and of prioritizing the ‘individual interest’ before the ‘institutional interest’ have made the American consumer overtly selfish, child-like and demanding the best services his money can fetch him; and surely mode of transportation is not an excusable exception to this school of thought.
When the privately owned fuss-less low cost airlines and the fuss-less car rental enterprises can excruciatingly spoil their customers with custom made traveling options, the nationalized Amtrak failingly falls far behind. The only strata of customers the Amtrak seems to unfailingly and securely attract all round the year are the baby-boomers and senior adults who for one receive 15% discounts on their cheapest tickets; secondly are disadvantaged when it comes to driving on the expressways in unfavorable weather conditions and thirdly have the time to ride on a train for two whole days and sometimes more.
What say you?
