Tag Archives: trains

We need more trains…

Well…I think this may be a political one…or it has a political component to it…one of the things that has struck me since I started watching a lot of British tv is the fact that they have such a cool rail network…I mean you can get on the underground in mid London and changing only one train, you can be in the North of Scotland later that same day…and you don’t need a car for any of it…and every town in the whole country is less than 5 miles from a rail station…now, I think it would be really cool if I could walk the 4 blocks down to the railroad tracks and jump on a train to GR or anywhere else in Michigan or the country…as it stands now, I’d have to drive an 80 mile round trip to GR to get on the train to anywhere and it really only stops a few places and shares the rails with freight that always takes precedent to passenger trains….and on the continent of Europe, you can get on a train that goes over 200 miles per hour and gets you places faster than the total time it takes to fly the same route…why can’t we have that here? I would love to be able to take a train around the country without having a reservation…you just show up at the station and get on the next train that comes through…and there are many trains every day no the one every couple of weeks…I think the US just doesn’t have the political will for mass transit and that sucks…wouldn’t it be cool to be able to get on a train downtown and go to Traverse City for the day? Or Detroit…where you could see a Tigers of Red Wings game and then just ride home instead of driving 3 hours…that would be cool…oh, well…