There's something about a train

If we're ever going to transcend politics and address our national infrastructure woes, evoking bipartisan sentiment around the romance and pleasures of train travel just might be the ticket.

You Can Hear the Whistle Blow a Hundred Miles
Just the possibility of riding trains again has me humming folk songs.

...Today the train sheds are gone, the grand old station is a luxury hotel, and Nashville is one of the largest cities in the country without passenger rail service. For a city so centrally located, this absence is odd, especially at a time when we recognize the damage cars do to the environment.

There are many brilliant proposals embedded in President Biden's mammoth infrastructure plan, and most aim to address climate change as they also address other critical needs. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in this country, and inspiring fewer people to drive cars will be a crucial element in the fight to limit the damage wrought by climate change. Expanding both freight and passenger rail service across the country is one plan that does double duty.

It's sorely needed here in the South, where car culture is endemic. Nashville to Savannah, Ga.; Montgomery, Ala., to Atlanta; Houston to Fort Worth; Mobile, Ala., to Baton Rouge, La. — all, I am grateful to note, are on the list of possible new train routes if Congress fully funds Mr. Biden's proposal.

It also happens to be a plan that ministers to the agitated traveler. If you've ever experienced rush hour Interstate traffic in Nashville or Atlanta, whether you live in one of these cities or are only passing through, you know what a gift these new routes would be, especially if other provisions of the infrastructure plan — like expanding public transit and simultaneously making cities more pedestrian-friendly — are also carried out.

Aside from enhancing the walkability and breathability of our communities, there's something about a train that reaches out to meet the yearning in the human soul. Perhaps it's the rhythmic rocking of steel wheels on a steel track, as soothing as the motion of a rocking chair. Perhaps it's that trains figure so prominently in our folk songs, linked to escape or adventure but ever joined to the tracks that point the way back home. At a deep, atavistic level, train travel is different from driving, different from flying, different even from riding the bus...

Margaret Renkl

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/opinion/Amtrak-trains-travel-south.html?smid=em-share