Can’t I just be pro-transportation?

It took me a few days to put my finger on what I found so strange about my colleague George Will’s take on trains. In Will’s view, support for high-speed rail is a “disorder [that] illuminates the progressive mind.” More specifically, “the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism. To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends.”

I think sensing socialism behind various preferences for rail policy says more about the speaker than those being spoken about. Take, well, me. My household owns a car. When it breaks down, we will purchase another car. And yet, I think it’d be good for this country to have better mass transit and better high-speed rail lines. Why? Well, my car is good for some things and bad for others. It’s good for going to get dinner in the suburbs, or furniture from Ikea. It’s bad for driving around Washington’s insanely crowded city streets during rush hour. It’s good for picking up a used chair I bought on 14th Street. It’s bad for driving to work, as parking costs $15 a day. It’s good for getting to places an hour or two away. It’s bad for getting to New York, as I don’t have a place to park, don’t want to drive while I’m there and would like to use my transit time to get some work done.

There’s no either-or here. No endless war between the car lovers and the train enthusiasts. I come from Southern California. We have a lot of cars down there and not much in the way of alternative transit options. Driving is a nightmare, as the streets are overloaded. Living in Washington has been a vast improvement for me: The subways and Amtrak take me where my car has trouble going, and I use my car for the errands and travels that suit its strengths. And as long as my tax dollars are going to subsidize transportation networks, I’d like them to subsidize a sensible transportation network such as Washington’s, not the endless traffic that I escaped when I moved away from Los Angeles.

In his piece, Will admits that most supporters of improved rail tend to say they want “to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use.” He then says the length of the list, plus its “flimsiness,” points toward his more esoteric interpretation. But perhaps people just support rail for all the reasons they say they support it! Why is that so hard to believe? And why does it have to be conscripted into the endless war between individuality and collectivism, or even cars and trains? I had some vanilla ice cream last night, but it wasn’t because I hate chocolate ice cream and the decadent, globalized culture that produced it.