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Rail Advocate Comments on WSJ Story
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
I commend to your attention this commentary by Fritz Plous of Chicago on a recent Wall Street Journal story.
On May 28, The Wall Street Journal ran a story “Europeans Protest Fuel Taxes but Accept High Prices.” Journal reporters Guy Chazan and Marcus Walker quoted anonymous “analysts” citing “fatalism” for the puzzling failure of European motorists to protest high gasoline prices. A named source, British trucking official Geoff Dossetter, was quoted describing motorists’ behavior as “dumb acceptance.”
Actually, the behavior of European motorists is not puzzling, but rational. Unlike Americans, Europeans are not dependent on their cars because fast, frequent intercity trains, commuter trains, rail rapid transit and streetcars connect most of their residential neighborhoods, workplaces, shopping areas and vacation spots.
In Dortmund, Germany, a town of fewer than 600,000, 130 intercity and commuter trains a day serve the downtown rail station, which connects with an extensive network of local light-rail lines that pass through the center of the city in a 6.5-mile subway. On the busier lines, the light-rail trains include a café car. Dortmund is not unique; scores of smaller European cities from Seville to Szeged and from Bordeaux to Bratislava make rail travel the centerpiece of their local and intercity mobility options. Some of those cities are on the fast-expanding European high-speed rail system, now carrying passengers at 200 mph—the equivalent of traveling from Chicago to Kansas City or Pittsburgh in about three hours.
Dortmund is smaller than Jacksonville, Nashville or Columbus, yet the mobility choices it offers to its citizens and visitors makes those three American cities look truly backward: Jacksonville has four Amtrak frequencies per day but no commuter rail, streetcars or rapid transit. Nashville has three daily commuter-rail round trips, but only from its eastern suburbs. All other daily work trips must be performed by car. There is no light-rail transit and, despite the city’s immense popularity with tourists, no intercity rail service (Amtrak reservation agents report Nashville is the most requested destination their company does not serve—what a huge missed opportunity). Columbus, the largest city not served by Amtrak, has no commuter trains or light rail either. Except for a small bus system it is completely auto-dependent.
Except for the very largest cities on the two coasts plus Chicago, most of America is stuck in the same car-dependent environment as Jacksonville, Nashville and Columbus. Not one American city in the 500,000-600,000 population range—not even Portland OR – approaches Dortmund’s level of rail mobility. In fact, a May 27 CNN poll showed that 78 per cent of 86,207 people queried said they had no transit options available to them.
If European motorists are responding to fuel-price increases with a “What, me worry?” attitude, it’s for a very good reason: They have nothing to worry about. The trains are running, the subways are running and the streetcars are running, most of them powered by electricity generated without oil controlled by hostile foreigners. The Europeans have cars, and they enjoy them, but their cars are a discretionary item, not a necessity. American policy makers need to look across the Atlantic and learn a lesson.
--George Chilson
NARP President
Posted by NARP
Tags: chilson, europe, fritz plous, oil(0) Comments
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