No Sins of Emission

By Michael Demarest

THE WAY TO GO by THOMAS C. SOUTHERLAND JR. and WILLIAM McC LEERY 256 pages. Simon & Schuster. $8.95.

Railroad enthusiasts in recent years have ranked somewhere between walrus watchers and Zeppelin buffs. Now, they have emerged as the Cassandras of the energy crunch.

Thanks to Arabs, environmentalists, and Nader's Raiders, among others, the long American love affair with the big car has distinctly chilled. In the face of fuel cutbacks and a growing resistance to new jetports, air travel is more parlous than ever. As the clickety-clackers have insisted for decades, there is no realistic alternative to mass transportation in the U.S. but the nation's once-magnificent railroad system. Even given the highly unlikely return of abundant fuel, the U.S. could not indefinitely tolerate or afford the poisonous pollution, cost, congestion, racket and uglification of a transportation system based on carbon monoxide and concrete. Even if automobiles could be made to run on recycled bath water, such problems are likely to persist and proliferate.

Railroads, unlike the billions of dollars worth of projected expressways and airports, are already in place; tracks, roadbeds and rights of way already exist. As the authors also point out, there is no more efficient form of transportation: a six-lane highway can move 9,000 people per hour (with an average car occupancy of 1.2 per trip); a single railroad track can transport 60,000 people per hour. Travel by electric-powered train is 23 times safer than by car, 2 1/2 times safer than by plane--and largely without sins of emission. The equipment for a revitalized rail system needs only to be rescued from shocking decrepitude at a fraction of the cost of the car-plane juggernaut.

Off-Track Ventures. To be sure, American trains today are among the world's worst. From the Toonerville trolleys of commuterdom to the fusty relics that creak round the continent, they presently offer only slightly more attractive transportation than a Caterpillar tractor. Railroad managements generally, and frequently their employees, make no secret of their disdain for the passenger; the big money has always been in freight, real estate, mining and other off-track ventures. In the classic words of James Hill, a 19th century president of the old Great Northern, "A passenger train is like the male teat--neither useful nor ornamental."

In fact, during the golden age of American railroading, roughly between 1870 and the late 1930s, passenger trains were both functional and elegant. In other countries railroads still offer an unbeatable combination of comfort, safety and reliability. France's crack expresses, like the Mistral, provide sumptuous meals, barbershops, bookstores, boutiques and business offices, all at speeds of up to 125 m.p.h. Japan's famed "bullet" trains, whooshing along on cushioned roadbeds, treat the passenger with geisha-like solicitude. When the English Channel tunnel is completed, le chemin de fer will whisk travelers from London to Paris in 2 1/2 hours.

In the U.S., where the Government has to bail out bankrupt managements, there are a few prophetic exceptions to bad service: Amtrak's New York-Washington Metroliners, the Virginia-Florida Autotrain, the Lindenwood commuter line from central New Jersey to Phildelphia and San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit are as advanced as any in the world.

The technology for an American supertrain already exists. Despite pinched budgets for railroad research and development, a number of companies and Government agencies are pushing space-age developments in propulsion and design that may well give train travel some of the zip and glitter the jet age once promised. Authors Thomas C. Southerland Jr., an environmentalist and professor of architecture at Princeton, and Journalist William McCleery emphasize that The Coming Revival of U.S. Rail Passenger Service, the book's subtitle, is by no means a whistle away. Nonetheless, they argue with clarity and restraint, we are at the stage "where nostalgia and science-fiction intersect." The whistle bloweth.

Michael Demarest

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