In last week’s Newsweek George Will analyzed why so many liberals (a/k/a progressives) like trains. He concluded that liberals like trains
“[b]ecause progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior.
… [T]he real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.
To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they – unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted – are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.
Time was, the progressive cry was ‘Workers of the world unite!’ or ‘Power to the people!’ Now it is less resonant: ‘All aboard!’”
But I think Mr. Will may be trying too hard. I don’t think that for most liberals the reasons are quite as dramatic as Mr. Will says. Rather, I think the answer is because trains are so – European.
When Americans, or at least liberal/progressive Americans of a certain age, think of trains, they don’t think of the Empire Builder or El Capitan or Broadway Limited. They think of the trains they rode on their trips to Europe after college and when they were young. They would buy a Eurorail pass, and they would crisscross Europe (or at least the western part of it) on “holiday” (as they say in Europe). Gas cost too much (because of taxes), planes were ridiculously expensive (because airline deregulation came so much later to Europe), and the trains ran on time.
It was fantastic – and so sophisticated (spelled “European”). Back home we had these big old cars and pollution and sprawl. It was so boring and wasteful, and it wasn’t European.
Except that things are different here because, well, we live in a different country. In Europe gas costs more than double what it costs here. People live closer together. And there are more people in less space, which makes trains more practical there.
The fact that the trains in Europe don’t pay for themselves doesn’t matter for American tourists because we don’t stay long enough to pay the taxes that pay the subsidies. And for that matter, the trains, at least in Germany, don’t run on time anymore. Deutsche Bahn is now known not for punctuality but for being late (assuming it runs at all, which in some cases it didn’t this past winter).
But high-speed rail combines nostalgia for the train trips of one’s youth with “European sophistication” to become a slam dunk for liberals/progressives. And the fact that federal and state governments, which don’t seem to have a lot of spare money right now, are going to pay to build it and will then have to pay to subsidize it, because it will lose money, doesn’t matter. High-speed rail just feels good.
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