Jack Betts’ column on a proposed “high speed” rail corridor through North Carolina illustrates the fundamental flaw in liberal support for rail: they believe the future rests in an outdated mode of transportation:
In 1960, passenger rail was being viewed by many railroads as a burden; some had already abandoned once-popular passenger train service in favor of more lucrative freight service; and the bankruptcy of the once powerful and later merged Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads was a decade away. That unhappy event heralded the end of the passenger train era in the United States and led a year later to the creation of Amtrak, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation. It operates many of the remaining passenger trains in this country.
Yet Betts doesn’t stop to ponder exactly why all those events occurred, instead waxing nostalgic ofr the Orange Blossom Special, which quit running in 1953.
As you can probably imagine, liberals claim it’s Republicans who want to take transportation policy back to the 1950s, a notion Antiplanner rejects. Antiplanner also notes all the crying from so-called progressives in the wake of the anti-train gubernatorial vote in Wisconsin.
