[soleri]

The lack of AMTRAK service drives me insane. There's a lot of reasons to explain this, but the bottom line is that there wasn't sufficient popular support to keep it going. If you had citizens writing their legislators (state and federal), and if you had enough visionaries in elected office, there would be train service and it could possibly integrated with local mass transit as Denver is doing.

I don't mean to start an argument here because no minds get changed in this forum. Still, this is where free-market ideology results in bad choices. The American right hates trains and seldom misses an opportunity to cut AMTRAK subsidies or ridicule the idea of trains. Instead we build freeways, which result in more sprawl, which results in more freeways, ad infinitum.

Rail is one way out of this madness. It can create density corridors, provide additional travel options, and increase tourism. Actual rail service to downtown Phoenix would be an incalculable boon in creating a regional center. Imagine the rail line running directly north of Sky Harbor being part of a passenger rail network. Or bullet trains to Tucson, the coast, or up the congested 1-17 corridor.

With our transportation options being reduced to flying and driving, we have a Hobson's choice of competing miseries. Driving to LA, e.g., gets hellish once you approach San Bernadino. Flying is like a case of slow strangulation where security necessity and crowded skies make the experience increasingly grim.

This forum is fairly small and inconsequential. But on one level, we're "navigators" of popular opinion because we actually think about transportation and urban issues. Without starting an argument, I wonder if we can actually see ourselves as a vanguard of informed urbanists.