Spicy Sammich

Most Americans won’t notice these lost opportunities. They don’t get out much or realize America’s growing backwardness. They don’t comprehend that a modern rail network, including high-speed rail, is a given is every populous advanced nation. They are stuck in 1970, when gas was cheap, when we had 100 million fewer people and less congested urban areas, when in many places it was like those car ads on television that show only one vehicle on an empty road. Somehow they think highways and airlines aren’t subsidized; they think many things that are not true, including this. Every transportation system is subsidized. In our case, we just have fewer choices. It’s an outrage that there are not frequent and fast trains linking, say, Phoenix and LA, Phoenix and Tucson. No, they’re happy to spend a huge portion of our lives stuck in traffic, changing the planet for the worse. Too bad that reality, in the form of oil scarcity and higher prices, increasing congestion and, ooops, climate change, will throttle these American delusions.