Will passenger trains play a role in the Trump administration's infrastructure overhaul?

Greetings, Mr. Trump, and congratulations. On Friday, you take the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States. If perhaps you have been following the National Parks Traveler, you know that many people have already made up their minds. You will be a disaster for the national parks. As a businessman, you will demand that the parks “make money,” and if they don’t help, give them away.

Contrast that attitude with how the preservation community thought of Stephen T. Mather a century ago. You may know of him, but let’s review. A successful millionaire from marketing borax, he was picked as the first director of the National Park Service precisely because of his business ties.

Preservationists were indeed desperate to match his talents against government bureaucrats bent on dismantling the parks. Led by the U.S. Forest Service, resource specialists in the federal bureaucracy considered preserving nature an indefensible waste.

I just don’t believe that is what you believe. For one thing, you live in New York City, America’s original headquarters for the park idea. Trump Tower overlooks Central Park, and surely the Palisades and the Hudson. They must have rubbed off on you at some point, along with Theodore Roosevelt and FDR.

If none of it did, I must concur: The parks may be in trouble. But I am betting — or should I say hoping — that what follows you already know. The way to good jobs and a better environment begins by restoring the nation’s railroads.

Certainly, the moment we turned our back on railroads, all of us forgot the history. We forgot their philanthropists, names like Vanderbilt and Harriman, let alone Cooke, Billings, Gray, and Hill. We forgot that wealth was the backbone of the environmental movement, finally to disparage wealth itself.

As radically, the United States — in going full bore for the automobile — staked its future on the promotion of self. Please, no more of a railroad’s restrictions. On the radio, it should be “your” station instead of “theirs.” Worse, a passenger train demands that you “obey” a schedule, and why should any red-blooded American be obeying that?

Togetherness

You see it; you feel it; you hear it. Our country has split apart. We accept that now as reality, forgetting how that reality in fact began.

The worst splits were made; they didn’t just happen, and yes, how we traveled played an enormous role.

Before the automobile, Americans accepted that travel meant togetherness. Aboard 20,000 intercity trains, lounge cars, dining cars, and parlor cars put a premium on togetherness. Today we crowd onto airplanes, but it has nothing to do with togetherness.

For the environment, the best part about railroads was preserving space itself. Most needed only a modest right-of-way. Reducing costs, they carefully followed the rivers and tunneled the mountains. Railroads did not simply go charging through.

Because we have lost our ability to see how railroads protected the landscape, we protest they ever did. History? Give us a break. Every American is “born” to drive!

Talk about a problem with consistency. Across the country, despite our hand-wringing over climate change, the sale of SUVs remains through the roof.

Officially established in 1832 as a "reservation," Hot Springs was later credited as the first national park, principally by promoters hoping to upstage Yellowstone. In 1880, Congress clarified that Hot Springs was a public park, and in 1921 made it a national park. The author here may be stretching the facts, but certainly not the meaning of national parks/Runte Collection

Either way, the more we fell under the spell of highways, the more we disparaged railroads. That dirty railroad! Who wants them around? Gasoline is America’s future.

2 Million Jobs

It is no wonder, as the railroads downsized, the nation further sacrificed 2 million jobs. Sure, we replaced some of those jobs in other industries, but few with a comparable respect for the land.

This is to help explain, as part of our national forgetfulness, some of the disparaging comments about your wealth. You, another businessman, cannot possibly respect the land. Why did you run for president? Only to enhance your “brand.”

No doubt, by touting their ability to protect the environment the railroads hoped to promote their brands. But were they using us? Were they insincere? If so, why did they agree to invest in the national parks, most with seasons barely three months long?

Because they did. As to motive, it is only we — now in the backwash of our disconnect — who insist on thinking the worst.

Consider the first two images accompanying this memo, the cover and page six of “Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.” Meant for prospective passengers, the brochure, printed in 1929, is by the Illinois Central Railroad.

Does page six not capture the essence of what it means to have public parks? Not only did the railroad write these words, it stood behind them. And the painting, too.

Once upon a time, trains brought most visitors to Yellowstone, where they boarded buses at Gardiner to tour the park/NPS

The Myth and the Play

In coming to deny that the railroads could be philanthropic, we ultimately sold ourselves on a myth. The interstate highway system would be better than railroads. No stoplights from coast to coast!

As for the trucks, what trucks? Freight would still be taking the railroads. When and if we needed trucks, they would be military vehicles for national defense.

Only, it didn’t turn out that way. Intercity freight, not just intercity passengers, abandoned the railroads for the interstates. The railroads went bankrupt, or merged, or both.

All but three finally relinquished their passenger trains to Amtrak in 1971. By then, the nation had just a skeleton of trains, and Amtrak halved even that.

Can anyone imagine a system more out of touch with the environment — and our need for jobs? As for driverless cars and electric cars, how will they escape the need for asphalt?

That part of it, the coup de grace for landscape, has always been ignored. Self and asphalt are the sacred marriage. This is not to deny what highways have also achieved, but it is to explain how their lobby operates. We’re not supposed to connect the dots.

Here are the two for you to consider. How can we pretend to be serious about climate change while remaining a nation so committed to roads?

From history, I see national transportation as a three-act play. In Act One, the American railroad treated the landscape with respect. Granted, railroad engineering helped force the respect. Overcoming distance and terrain, railroads needed to minimize grades by following natural contours. Again, they simply couldn’t go charging through.

It made for a picturesque, even stunning, right-of-way. To take a train was to celebrate America the Beautiful in everything the railroads built, published, or sold.

Late in Act One, we meet Henry Ford. It’s the beginning of the 20th century, and the railroads are still riding high. Despite Mr. Ford’s assembly line, he has a problem. Most roads in the United States (motorists hardly called them highways) are still a rutted, muddy mess.

In Act Two, the Highway Lobby gets the ruts removed, next to call on the federal government and the states to provide more paved highways, even if they run parallel to the railroads themselves.

The railroads object, but to little avail. The Highway Lobby has perfected its labels. Railroads are backward and overbearing. In Congress, especially, it works like a charm.

Some leaders object, of course. Franklin D. Roosevelt, campaigning for president in 1932, called highway subsidies a bum deal for railroads. No matter, the disconnect continued to widen, now on the strength of the government’s ability to tax.

Keep taxing the railroads, that is. Most highways, as public property, escape and never pay a dime.

World War II temporarily saved the railroads, but then comes the deepening of Act Three. Shopping centers! Strip malls! Suburbs! Billboards! The landscape? What is that?  

Would this view of the New River Gorge be as bucolic if an interstate highway replaced the train tracks?/NPS

The Vernacular Landscape

Intellectuals become loath to admit the truth, as well. In university circles, the bandwagon continues to insist that railroads are “evil.” The automobile allows a “vernacular” landscape. Railroads force “conformity” on everyone.

It is no wonder, by abandoning railroads, we ensured the worst outcomes for the environment. From gutting the countryside to global warming, it all began with that vernacular landscape, the one based on asphalt, sprawl, and a lack of discipline.

In brief, there is your challenge. Someone in government finally must break the marriage between self and asphalt if the environment is not to be overrun.

During the campaign, I believe I heard you say it once. A country committed to business common sense — and environmental common sense — would want to have high-speed rail.

Up to now, high-speed rail has been a trap, frankly an excuse for doing nothing. While itself decrying railroads, the Highway Lobby helped “invent” high-speed rail. When trains become perfect, i.e., faster than Superman, you can have them back. Until then (and it’s been a very long then), stay in your cars where you belong.

The environment simply needs railroads, period. Trees, wildflowers, grass, and bushes know how to reclaim railroad rights-of-way. We still need the beauty, not just the speed.

Financially, it’s another well-kept secret. The cash cows at Amtrak are its long-distance trains, the ones people still want for seeing the country. Only false accounting, meant to secure Amtrak’s bureaucracy in the Northeast Corridor, denies that fiscal truth.

Of course, the Highway Lobby doesn’t want you fixing Amtrak, either. Bring down the curtain and close the play.

After all, in Act Four, we would come to our senses and finally get it right. Cars, yes. Planes, yes. But also great railroads, too.

National Clarity

To be sure, our dependence on automobiles will not end overnight, because again, the disconnect is total. But if you really believe in jobs and the environment, yes, “shovel-ready” for once would mean more than asphalt. The country would spend every bit as much on rail.

Where should it be spent — and how? First, by reconnecting every landlocked city in the country, i.e., cities like Binghamton, New York. The bus service and airline service is terrible. And to think Binghamton used to have a dozen trains.

And yes, let’s reconnect the national parks, beginning with the branch lines to Yellowstone. They never should have been torn up in the first place, but that’s exactly what our disconnect encouraged.

There, your background offers hope. You have built golf courses. You like open space. In Scotland, you are disturbed that wind farms may destroy the scenery. You must love the national parks.

The point is to honor the conviction, and apply it consistently, that the greater landscape is a public good. If you do that, and really believe in doing it, you are exactly what the country needs.

Trump Tower? Okay, you have an ego. But so did Rockefeller, Ford, Edison, and Westinghouse. Nor does the list end there.

Speaking of the Rockefellers, what exactly is Rockefeller Center? It’s a real estate development, just like yours. No matter, the family, led by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., invested $1 billion in our national parks and public history. Granted, I have adjusted that figure for inflation, but think what a legacy it remains.

As earlier suggested, I hope you’re reading the Traveler. Now to offer this final piece of historical advice. China didn’t steal our railroads, and certainly not our railroad jobs. We stood by and let it happen. Bringing those jobs back — and our railroads back — is entirely up to us — and you.

Undoubtedly, your distinguished predecessors from New York would agree. On taking office, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt made the prosperity of America Job One.

In the end, what distinguished their place in history was their determination not to let prosperity overwhelm the environment. Rather, intuitively following the heritage of New York, they insisted the nation couple prosperity with beauty. Also millionaires, they never thought the worst of wealth. But then, they were closer to the history — and in fact lived the history — when corporate philanthropy helped save the environment.

There, I suggest you start with the national parks. Visit them often, and yes, bring railroad executives along. How can we do this? How can we get the trains back? Don’t say no. Tell me what you need to say yes.

Jobs will follow, and they will be good jobs. And what is more, they will be inspirational. So, Mr. President — and now that you are the president — when might we resume that path?

_________

Suggestions for the White House Library

John R. Stilgoe, Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983. 

_______. Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States Landscape. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007.

 Alfred Runte, Allies of the Earth: Railroads and the Soul of Preservation. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2006.

 _______. Trains of Discovery: Railroads and the Legacy of Our National Parks. 5th ed. Lanham, MD, and New York: Roberts Rinehart, 2011.

Richard J. Orsi, Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850-1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Joseph P. Schwieterman, When the Railroad Leaves Town: American Communities in the Age of Rail Line Abandonment—Eastern United States. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001.

_______. When the Railroad Leaves Town: American Communities in the Age of Rail Line Abandonment—Western United States. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2004.