by Stephen Dreyfus

Created on: May 12, 2009

TRAINS, THE MISSING TIER OF TRANSPORTATION.

Walking, Cycling, Driving, Training, and Flying. These are the five tiers for the transportation of people. Yet we Americans are so obsessed with cars we expect an automobile to provide virtually all of our needs of travel, save walking for very short distances, such as to get into the car, and flying for very long distances, such as to cross an ocean or continent.

If we think of these five tiers of transportation as five vital interconnected systems, we can make sense of why bullet trains are as important as cars, and bicycles are as important as jet planes. Think of the different systems of the human body. We have a nervous system that consists of a brain and spinal cord, a cardio-vascular system of heart and lungs, a skeletal system of teeth and bones, a muscular system and a digestive system. Take any one of these away, and life ceases to function. Impair any one system of the body and the rest of the body cannot function normally.

The same principle is true of transportation. All five tiers work together to grant us mobility. It makes no more sense to state cars are better than trains, or trains are better than cars; than it is to state muscles are more important than bones, or that bones are more important than muscles.

Our country boasts one of the finest networks of roads and highways in the world. America has embraced the automobile as the symbol of prosperity, freedom, and independence. Manned flight was born in America, and our nation which stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is united as much by flight, as our common language.

Yet lately it has become evident that relying predominately on cars and planes, creates so many problems, that merely improving cars and roads, or planes and airports is not the solution. The solution is to provide all five tiers of transportation..

I'll never forget the day I had to catch a flight from Kennedy International Airport to Greenville, SC. I flew with my daughters to New York to celebrate my Grandmother's 95th birthday. My flight home was later that evening, but as the party wore on, and dinner had yet to be served, I became more and more anxious about missing my flight. I would have opted to simply forgo dinner, but I didn't think it was fair to let my children go hungry. Finally dinner was served. We ate, made apologies for rushing off, and got into the rental car to drive the twenty-some miles to the airport. Little did I realize, that traffic would

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