Explaining Amtrak's relative prominence in the Northeast, Matt makes a good point:Transportation is always a network phenomenon -- part of what makes taking the train from DC to New York appealing is that when you arrive car-less in New York, that's fine. Indeed, driving from DC to New York would becomes an expensive/annoying proposition when you consider the difficulty/expense of parking in New York and a car's limited utility in terms of getting around. Even if you live in the suburbs, it makes sense to take Metro to union station and take the train up to NYC rather than driving. But if you took the train from Tucson to Phoenix you'd probably wind up needing to rent a car anyway, so why not just drive?Right. Scale matters. After decades and decades of massive highway and airport subsidies meant to create a usable nationwide network of roads and airports, it's really easy to get around the country by car and plane. Since no similar money or thought has been put into a coherent transit infrastructure, we don't have one. But we certainly could.Image used under a Creative Commons license from MarkyBon.
