Millennial Railroading

I read this very interesting column from literature professor John Crisp of Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas about high-speed rail.

Yeah, I know, what does a literature professor from a college no one ever heard of in a backwater city know about passenger trains? But what makes it interesting is that Crisp argues that millennials - the little snot-noses who followed my generation and made a star out of Britney Spears - could get behind high-speed rail in America because they're driving less often and buying fewer cars.  With the millennial generation less enamored with automobiles and more desirous to spend time and money on something other than traffic jams and gasoline, respectively, Crisp says, they could be the catalyst for change in our transportation policy, which forces use to spend an average of up to five years of ourt lives in our cars, whether we want to or not.

I don't doubt Crisp's sincerity, but I have a hard time buying into the idea that the millennials will get behind high-speed rail.  First of all, you can't get millennials interested in getting behind anything political.  Secondly, high-speed rail involves intercity travel; millennials are more likely to need local transit to get to their jobs in the more compact towns and dense cities they live in than getting from one town to another. And third, because most millennials are broke, a lot of them haven't been to a country where rapid rail is the norm and so haven't ridden such a train . . . and thus have no first-hand experience with the concept.  And I'll bet you any amount of money that if you told them there are passenger trains in France, Germany and Japan that go 200 miles an hour, on smooth, steady rails, with minimal noise in their rail cars,   they'd be like, "Yeah, right, trains that go faster than autos and don't make you ride-sick or make a lot of noise - that is so science fiction! Tell me another one."

Anyway, neither millennials nor anyone else will likely have any reason to support high-speed rail in the U.S., because not only have several states quashed plans for such projects once Republican governors took over, high-speed rail is having trouble even in states with Democratic governors.  Illinois is making modest progress at best on its Chicago-St. Louis line, and California's high-speed rail project is running out of money and losing support even among the Golden State's most progressive politicians.  But it's not like millennials will care.  Where are they going to go, anyway?