High-speed only for high rollers

We have grown up in a culture of mobility. We take for granted the ability to drift from city to city, visit distant loved ones, and cross borders in search of work or play. And as cars and highways have become the most prominent marks of our civilization, the mobility that has characterized our country from its earliest days has transitioned into a cultural dependence on high-speed travel. While long-distance migration for most is an annual event (going home for the holidays), for some of us, it is a weekly affair (going away for the weekend), or even a daily ritual (commuting).

STAN GOLDEWSKI/NEWSMAKERS Expensive fares mean that Amtrak's new Acela Express is mass transit only in name.

Our penchant for this lifestyle, however, is starting to reach a threshold. Highways now carry hundreds of thousands of cars over their original capacity, and transportation authorities have begun to acknowledge the obvious: that superhighways have reached a breaking point, where perpetual reconstruction and expansion no longer meet the curve of demand. If current patterns persist with no alternatives, the ever-increasing number of highway migrants will glut our road systems into the kind of paralysis now witnessed only on holiday weekends. Meanwhile, the transportation authorities have astoundingly weak strategies to address highway transit's impending doom, prioritizing attempts to persuade drivers to stay off the road by providing better updates on traffic jams.

It doesn't make sense in a nation of migrants, however, to ask people to stay off the roads, at least as long as the other options for transportation are prohibitively expensive. Missing from this picture is an agenda for speedy, affordable, long-distance mass transit. The one indication of such an agenda over the past year has been markedly disappointing: the arrival of Acela Express, Amtrak's brand new Boston-New York-Washington high-speed train. Although Acela has been heralded as a futuristic update to our public transportation system, Amtrak's new line is a disappointingly inaccessible knock-off of European and Japanese transportation solutions—definitely not public in any real sense of the word. In fact, the new train incites cause for concern that, as the highway system grows unusable, the kind of mobility we currently take for granted will become a privilege reserved for the elite.

Acela Express is designed to compete with airlines for weal-thy business travelers, not to lure drivers from the overburdened I-95. While the new train isn't quite speedier than flying, it does offer a better quality high-end traveling experience, with roominess, rotating chairs, conference tables, laptop jacks, and a gourmet coffee bar. The idea is that an Amtrak tweaked to include corporate refinements will make the typical executive's trip feel more productive and comfortable than a flight. This refinement, furthermore, is enhanced by the mere exclusivity of the new train's environment, made possible by the exorbitant price. While the fact that Acela Express tickets come only in first class and business class hints at its elite market, the price literally writes it on the wall. Consider the $69 fare for a one-way, two-hour, business-class ride from New Haven to Boston, compared to an already excessive $40 for the three-hour, normal Amtrak and $27 for the painfully long, four-hour Greyhound. If you want to be even more exclusive, you can pay Acela's $118 first-class price.

As it happens, Amtrak was left with little choice but to streamline the high-speed trains for the high-end. Whereas in Europe no accessible high-speed trains are expected to run without help from the government, a Congressional mandate that Amtrak be fiscally self-sufficient by the year 2003 forced the company to cater to elite travel. Of course, a Congress with a bit more vision might understand that it would cost society far less to promote high-speed trains as long-distance mass transit than it would to ameliorate and fatten supersaturated highway systems, subsidize oil, and address environmental damage.

Nevertheless, the smaller destinations on Acela's map are ecstatic over what they optimistically see as a new corporate commuter line, especially New Haven. Local boosters at Yale and the Chamber of Commerce believe the train will make New Haven a more attractive place for professionals to live and do business, facilitating the coveted biotech boom (which, the argument goes, is hindered by the weak Tweed-New Haven Airport). Even if this speculation were realistic, however, highways paralyzed by strategic inattentiveness will not assist local growth—regardless of Acela.

More importantly, officials in New Haven and elsewhere are demonstrating a sad set of priorities when the only improvement in "mass transit" they promote is a posh train for the upper bracket. In this context, an unpleasantly classist implication emerges: that poor people should stay put; that only professionals are welcome to travel with ease in and out of New Haven; that people without enough money should learn, as the highways grow undrivable, to deny friendships, families, and better work opportunities. If the only alternatives are designed for the rich, our society's loyalty to a terminally ill, auto-driven culture will increasingly turn the kind of freedom of movement we currently take for granted into a rare privilege.

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