By Francis X. Rocca on 8.15.02 @ 12:03AM
Modern transportation is sadly out of gas.
Owing to the discovery of a defective part, Amtrak this week
took most of its
Acela express trains out of service, thus closing off the only
competitive alternative to air travel for busy commuters along the
BOS-NY-WASH corridor.
Reading that news made me recall what it was like to ride a
truly fast train: the AVE (Spain's version of the French TGV),
which runs between Madrid and Seville. At the AVE's top speed of
185 mph, I felt I was flying, an impression enhanced by the cars'
aerodynamic design. I've never been on an Acela, but with a maximum
speed of 135 mph on Amtrak's antiquated tracks, the effect can't be
nearly as thrilling.
No, this is not another column about America's failure to match
Europe's snazzy public transportation. I know that Amtrak is in the
financial hole, and upgrading tracks to let Acela show its stuff
would cost
"billions of dollars, akin to the amounts spent on highways."
Politicians may love high-speed rail projects for their glamour,
not to mention the economic benefits to constituents, but taxpayers
shouldn't have to pay billions to spare a few thousand
professionals dead time on the tarmac and occasional traffic jams
to and from LaGuardia.
What American trains most grievously lack isn't speed, but
elegance and romance. This wasn't always the case. Remember Cary
Grant and Eva Marie Saint dallying and eluding the bad guys in
North by Northwest (1959)? Their encounter might have
lacked a certain spark had it taken place, not at a formally set
table in a dining car, but over microwaved hamburgers in an
Amcafe.
Movies are not real life, of course, and never have been. For
all I know, train travel lost its luster well before 1959, and
Hitchcock's portrayal of it is tinged with nostalgia. Yet surely
the image refers to something contemporary viewers would have
recognized; whereas my experience of trains since the late '70s has
as much to do with Eva Marie Saint as it has with the Space
Shuttle. Nor are things significantly better in Europe than in the
States.
I know there's no point in hoping for a new Golden Age of rail
-- technology and globalization have changed the pace of life
forever, or for at least as long as I'll be around -- but as long
as I'm wishing for the impossible, my first choice would be for a
type of conveyance that I've never even boarded. I refer to the
great German airships of the '20s and '30s, exemplified by the Graf
Zeppelin and the ill-fated Hindenburg.
Newsreel images of the Hindenburg in flames, and the horrified
voice of radio reporter Herbert Morrison describing the 1937
explosion ("Oh, the humanity!"), are so famous that few realize the
death toll was 35 -- a terrible loss, yet hardly enough (you might
have thought) to damn an entire mode of transportation. Had the
Hindenburg been fueled not with hydrogen but with non-flammable
helium, as its designers had originally intended, it never would
have blown up.
Yet even if some determined entrepreneur had managed to
rehabilitate the image of the airship, historians conclude that it
could never have competed with the jet engine. After all, the
state-of-the-art Hindenburg's top speed was only 86 mph.
I wonder, though. What about ocean liners? Though jets have
replaced them for practical purposes, there's still a vast industry
based on vacation cruises. Why couldn't airships enjoy a similar
second life serving tourism?
Imagine the possibilities: gliding over the châteaux of
the Loire Valley, or the pyramids of Guatemala, or Niagara Falls.
Imagine traveling from New York to Los Angeles and watching the
Republic roll past, slowly and from close enough by that you can
see the layout of small towns and spot animals in the wild.
Go ahead and laugh. It's just the helium.
topics:
Transportation, Movies
