Bringing Life Back to the Ghosts of our Rail Network Past
I just booked another trip on Amtrak for the holiday break from Williston, North Dakota to Portland, Oregon, on the Empire Builder. One can book a room for about the price of plane tickets (they are expensive from North Dakota) and have a relaxing trip overnight with four great meals included. In addition, unlike the airport, we can park our car for free. As flying becomes even more nerve-racking with delays, lines, turbulence, and technical failures, I prefer to take the train unless it is over an ocean.
The Empire Builder is a remnant of a much more inclusive rail system that existed a few generations ago, as seen on the map above. The ghost of this network still mainly exists on rail routes that still carry freight as they once carried passengers. The ghost network remains in the many remaining railroad stations that dot many towns. In many cases, these buildings, often constructed of durable materials to last generations and too grand to tear down, have been repurposed as offices, businesses, and museums. Still situated near active rail lines, they wait, ready to serve again as part of a national transport network. As I wrote earlier, switching to more rail transportation is the "low-hanging fruit" of the climate crisis since the network largely still exists, just waiting for trains. The Sierra Club has detailed the data around the climate case for rail in a 49-page PDF booklet showing how better rail is for transporting people and goods. The proposed additions by the Federal Railroad Administration to Amtrak routes would go a long way toward getting back what we have lost.
 |
| Restoring service to these routes as has been proposed would be a great step forward. |
We thought we were getting freedom by switching to cars, except it wasn't freedom. Being stuck on urban streets and freeways soon became a clogged nightmare for most. Personal vehicle transport is still the best way to travel in rural places like North Dakota, but not between large cities or within them. The most inefficient car use is to make short trips within a city. It is high in emissions and wear and tear on the vehicle. Just reducing short vehicle trips would go a long way toward helping climate and vehicle longevity.
 |
| An electric tram in Fargo in the 1920s or 30s. Just what we need today already existed a century ago. Imagine modern tram cars running on these same streets. |
Before World War Two, rail was already in decline but got a boost from World War Two austerity programs that limited resources. World War Two offers us many lessons we can learn from about how to solve our planetary crisis through austerity, conservation and recycling. After the war, the decline was precipitous as post war prosperity, new roads, suburbanization and growing individualism led to victory for the car. Also to be considered is the role that racism and the end of legalized discrimination played. The expansion of civil rights for oppressed minorities meant white people would be forced to share equally the network with everyone. These things all connected destroy the world's best transit network. It is a network we need to get back.
Replacing many of those short in town trips with light rail and trams would significantly reduce emissions and pollution. Unlike the intercity rail system that still mostly exists in ghost form, the tram networks mostly have to be totally rebuilt. As the 1913 Twin Cities map below illustrates, this network has great potential if were to be brought back.
 |
We have this magical thinking, especially in the U.S., that if we switch out all our fossil fuel cars for electric, everything will be ok. While an electric car is better on the surface than an ICE car, those gains diminish when you consider all those ICE vehicles becoming waste products full of plastics and toxic chemicals, much of which is not recyclable. Many ICE cars would last for decades, like my own car, if used less and mostly for longer trips. We would be better off keeping our old cars and using them less than perpetuating a system that uses too many resources per capita. This is another lesson from World War Two as people were forced to fix up their old because new was not available. The magical transition to electric cars diminishes more when we consider all the new resources required to replace all those cars with electric ones. Individual transport is costly from a resource standpoint; thus, from a climate and impact on nature standpoint, it is more costly to the planet than collective forms like rail. While we still need cars, trucks, and roads, the vast sums of money, resources and space we put toward roads are not often factored in and are a hidden tax that must be considered as part of the cost.
Comments