Although this comment is alarming, the statistics that follow say that the chances of being hit in an airplane by another airplane are 6.05 out of every one million air traffic operations, or .0000605%. Long odds, I should say, since your chances of being T-boned at any given intersection in Texas by my mom's mom are about 30-1. Still, when a car hits a car, or even a van and a bus, there are not 100 people involved, nor are survivors likely to be falling thousands of feet to the ground. Still, the skies are crowded and it's not getting any better.
Alternative? The AmTrack system. This is an out-dated, inconvienient, overcrowded and under-maintained system of passenger railways that serves mainly the East Coast, but does have a few vines running dismally (and expensively) through the vast back-woods known as the rest of America. Stops are nearly arbitrary and although many, many places have rails running through them, almost none of them have passenger service.
Or, you could take a bus. Or you could hitchhike. Neither of these options are near as safe or clean as they were back in the glory days of the Great Depression, World War II or even those socially conscious days of the Great American Love Movement.
Or, you can drive. Or you could back when you didn't have to mortgage the children to take a trip over the river and through the woods to visit Grandma and Grandpa for the holidays. But, thanks to our benevolent and beneficial foreign policies and this administration's obsession with aiding "bidness", gasoline is now only a sweet nostalgia for many of us. We struggle to put enough into our tanks to go to work to pay for our rent and groceries.
So, what, you ask, is a person to do nowadays?
Well, I have an idea.
Many, or I dare say most of us don't remember the Great Depression first hand, but we know about it, Roosevelt and The New Deal. The Works Projects Administration (WPA) and the Civillian Conservation Corps (CCC) gave jobs to thousands out of work by creating public projects and putting funds out into the communities. Workers traveled all over the country following the programs to stay employed and sent money home to their starving families. And the country was given such wonderful advantages as the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Hoover Dam and beautiful and enduring works of art that can be seen in and on buildings built under these programs all around the nation. Right now we are blowing $12 billion dollars a month in Iraq. Why don't we just come home and put that money to good use here?
I propose that we recreate Franklin Delano Roosevelt's programs under the New Deal and go to work putting in a National Passenger Rail system. And I don't mean to put passenger trains on existing rail lines. Let me explain.
Why can't we map out a sensible web of routes with major traffic leading to a smaller set of webs leading to a yet smaller set? With this type of technology, trains could be elevated and stacked with smaller, low-passenger lines circling between larger trunk lines. That way a person from Mouskin, for example, could catch a train to, say Austin, then go to Kansas City Hub and from there go back down the mountain to where ever: Chicago to Cleveland to Solan or Los Angeles to El Mirage or Jacksonville to Crystal River, Florida? Let me show you an example:
And while we're at it, why should it take days to get across the country? The technology is available for high-speed, magnetic-levitation (mag-lev) bullet trains that can take passengers quick as a wink from one city to the next. The mag-lev trains actually travel without touching a rail, so the frictionless travel requires much less energy than a conventional train. And, with the need for electricity and not fuel, energy sources need not be combustible. Solar cells and microwave concentrators could be used to generate electricity both on the trains themselves and along the right of ways of the new routes. Other non-combustible sources of energy could also be used such as wind power, water power and even geothermal and tidal power. Think of it, high-speed, long-distance travel with no pollution and NO GASOLINE! And, since we are teetering on the brink of another depression, I think that a pre-emptive strike on American unemployment makes more sense than on non-existent weapons of mass destruction, don't you?
And think of the advantages: People could live farther out from their jobs, more people could commute to high-paying jobs, small, abandoned towns could become revitalized, education opportunities would become more readily available, cultural exchange would be facilitated, travel could become affordable again, commerce would cover a wider area, large health centers would become more available to the average citizen and Americans would have something to be proud of again. (Plus, cats could go ANYWHERE!) What's wrong with this picture?
Well, I'm sure there is a downside, but let me ask you, what do you think about the upside? Is it something worth exploring? I can tell you, it's something we can do! And how do I know?
Because there is nothing I have just mentioned that has not already been done. All we have to do is get it through our heads that we could use a safer, more efficient and effective way to travel across this country. And, that together, we can afford it. I mean, really, look at what we're paying for now. And remember, we've pulled together and done it before. Better transportation, increases in commerce and more jobs. Now, you tell me, hmmm?
Perry Tenitiss
Perry for President in 2007
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