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The Importance of Transportation For Our City and Its Youth

My name is Maddie Pigg and this summer I am working on the WanderRoots project. My idea of a third safe space is basically any green space or hiking trail like French Park, located around Amberley Village and Pleasant Ridge Cincinnati. I am passionate about public transportation, specifically the United States’s lack of it. In order for teens and pre-teens to get to any of these safe spaces around the city, they need their guardian to drive them via car or they have to take the metro, which is not a safe method of transit especially for younger lone travellers. Transportation is the backbone to these safe spaces and the public's access to them. 


Most of the time, when you ask a U.S. citizen to picture a train in their mind they will think of the subway; if they live in more rural areas, they may think of the broken down cargo trains that have been running for decades. Few people think of trains as a popular means of public transport, much less as a reliable, dependable, or fast one.


In the US, cities have been planned around cars, even cities that were built before the automobile era have been updated to fit this criteria. As an American, you are probably used to large parking lots, large shopping centers and grocery stores being separated from living spaces, and SO many highways. Usually, when you see trains in the US outside of NY, you see broken down and old tracks that occasionally have a stopped, run down cargo train covered in graffiti on them. 


              So what can trains even do for the US? Why should we start seriously considering the benefits of them and installing more passenger rails around the country? Well, have you ever been stuck on the highway during rush hour, with the sun beating down on your face, while mindlessly staring out at the seemingly endless line of cars while the clock moves ever further into the evening? If you said yes, you are a part of over 80% of people in this country. The image below is from the Bureau of Transportation statistics, and is a great visualization of how traffic has both increased and decreased over the years.


          

These numbers are not nearly as common in most places around the world compared to the US. Sure, in Europe there is traffic congestion, but this is only in major cities like Paris, London, Berlin, etc. Even then, traffic is only present within these cities a select few hours of the day. This is common for the US, but over the past few years traffic here has become a common experience all day long. The only time you can drive peacefully in most urban parts of the US is in the late hours of the night. Europe’s traffic congestion, although similar to the US, has other options of travel other than cars, trains being the other big option. Europe actually has traffic regulations in the form of urban access regulations, which regulate the access some vehicles have to certain urban areas. These regulations help limit the amount of vehicles entering more dense city areas. NYC and London have relatively similar populations, with London having around 9 million people in its metropolitan area and NYC having around 8.5 million with a larger city area. The statistics are very similar here, with the main outliers being how many people ride in their own cars and how many people ride on their bikes – but bikes are another topic I’d like to get into another time. Also notice how much more carbon dioxide is being put into the atmosphere in NYC compared to London. These emissions have a much greater impact on the environment, and the main reason London has less emissions is because of their more diverse modes of transportation. In most of the US, especially NYC, the best options for people to get from point A to point B are by car and the metro. Compared to London, where they have people who bike to work, ride the trolleybus, and the train. 

The metro system in the US is horrible. Here is a good example. The image to the right of the text is the route I take to school every morning. Usually, the car ride is 13-15 minutes, but whenever I ride the metro, the ride becomes 45 minutes. In the colder

months it becomes an hour to an hour and 30 minutes. This makes it so that I have to leave the house over an hour early for what would normally be a 15 minute drive to school. It just isn't worth it for me to get up an hour earlier than I need to every morning just to sit at a transfer stop for 30 minutes when I could be at home or even at school.

It just isn't worth it for me to get up an hour earlier than I need to every morning just to sit at a transfer stop for 30 minutes when I could be at home or even at school.

This is one of the reasons as to why good transportation is so important, along with having multiple options of transportation.

Although the US actually has more ground coverage with the railroad system than Europe or east Asia – East Asia having 192,311+ km of railroads, Europe having 201,000+km and the US having 220,000+km Europe rail length – the function of these rails differ greatly In the US, railroads are mainly used to transport cargo, otherwise known as freight trains. Compared to Europe, which is mainly used as passenger rail. It’s important to also consider the US’s size compared to Europe’s, being about 4% larger than the entire continent itself.



















In 2017, Vassar College stated that there are over 100,000 miles – 160,934km – of abandoned railroad in the US (Ford Scholars Program - Going Off the Rails - The Effect of Railroad Abandonments on Rural Economies - Stories - Vassar College). These abandoned railroads are often converted into hiking trails or greenways, which can cause many issues, one of which being that having abandoned railways converted into greenways increases property value for single family homes because the land becomes specialized. This can make it harder for people to afford to live in the area. Aside from this, abandoned rails span across a majority of the rural US, which just shows how much missed potential these railways could have had. Due to the rural US being vast and far stretched, these rails could have helped transport both cargo and passengers more efficiently across the US, which would not only help the environment by putting less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but also  be a potentially cheaper option to travel across the country – especially with consistently rising gas prices. 



            A lot of people in the US may think of trains as slow, but those in major cities like NY know the true potential trains have with fast transportation. Take the bullet train for example. Mostly found in the metropolitan areas of Japan, China, Spain, France and Germany, these trains can travel up to 250-350 km/hr (155-217 mph) whereas the best american high speed rails can only go 160-200 km/hr (100-124 mph) which may not seem like much, but for the length these trains travel (2500 miles or more) the difference becomes much more noticeable. For example, the average American passenger train would take up to 2-4 days to cross the entire continental US, even longer for an average freight train (6-8 days). Whereas a bullet train would only take 15-20 hours at a maximum. Now can you see the missed potential here? (How long does it take to travel across the U.S. by train? | US Train Travel Guide)


Knowing all of this, we now need to ask why the US doesn't have a notable railroad system, or a single bullet train. The history behind US transportation is a long one, but it is important to acknowledge in order to understand our current relationship with transportation today. The first kinds of transportation seen in the US – aside from horseback – were ferryboats and ox carts, introduced in 1630 and 1740 respectively. In 1830, the first railroad began operation in Baltimore, OH. From then on, railroads began to evolve and spread all across the continental US. Underground railways, electric railways, freight railways and elevated rail lines became the backbone of US transport for both cargo and people  (History of the National Transit Database and Transit in the United States | FTA). This remained the same up until the 1900’s-1920’s, where the automobile became affordable for the masses. Before this, cars were considered to be only for the wealthy, as they were the only ones that could afford them. As the booming 20’s came around, the average automobile became easier to produce. This caused them to drop in price, allowing more people to be able to afford them. And at that time, cars were all the rage. For most people, the idea of traveling alone or with people you actually want to travel with, and being able to go wherever you want – just about whenever you want – was a topic of extreme interest and excitement. Following the idea of being able to travel with the people you wanted, some businessmen would pilot this idea to privileged white people through racism. For some individuals, having a car meant that people wouldn't have to travel with people they viewed as lesser than them; this included most immigrants at the time, Asians, Eastern Europeans, Southern Europeans, African Americans, and most women. These groups of people being discriminated against also wanted the chance to get a car in order to avoid the racism of the US transportation system. Unsurprisingly, there were very few immigrants at the time who could afford cars, due to job insecurity and the racism rooted in the American system. These ideas allowed for the automobiles' rise to fame to be so widely accepted within the US. In addition, the spread of city limits and suburbs after WWII increased the need for cars to reach these further out places. “One of the most striking features of the new suburbs was their uniformity: they were filled with young, white families. Black families, even those who could afford to move to the suburbs, were often unwelcome.” (City and Suburb | National Museum of American History) 


Many white people wanted to be separated from those they deemed inferior and cars were their biggest help to achieve this. The effects of these suburbs remain to persist into our modern day, and is one of the reasons why we have cars as our 

main means of transport today.

(Park Forest suburb, Illinois, 1952)



Currently, cars along with transportation in general account for 30% of US greenhouse gas emissions, making it the largest contributor to US greenhouse gas emissions. Worldwide, these emissions aren't as bad, but they still are a problem for our environment and the wildlife in it. We are experiencing global warming like never before, with further worsening weather conditions and seasons being straight up erased from the calendar in areas where this isn't supposed to happen. We need to take more action to help slow, or hopefully stop global warming at the rapid pace it's going at the moment. Bringing trains – or even improving public transportation within the states and around the world – will help, even if it doesn't seem like it. These changes can start here in Cincinnati, and it's up to us as a community to make this happen. So what can we do? Well, focusing on Ohio, there is a movement going on focused in Columbus called All Aboard Ohio. “All Aboard Ohio is a non-profit, member-based organization dedicated to promoting improved public transportation and passenger rail service throughout the state.” Please check out their website to learn more.- All Aboard Ohio


Here are some maps and websites that can help you really visualize how limited our train systems are compared to the rest of the world, along with some articles I found that helped this post come to life. 

North American Rail Network- this website shows the United States rail network in amazing detail, but can be quite complicated sometimes.

FRA Rail Network- this is another US rail map website that is extremely helpful in visualizing the US rail systems.

Europe Rail Network- This is a great website that has a map of Europe's rail network, notice how much more rail networks there are here compared to the US?

China Railway Map- this is another great railway map, located in China and detailing its vast rail network- bullet trains included.

OpenRailwayMap- This map is my personal favorite, it shows the entire worlds rail networks and systems, also allowing you to see how fast some trains go in certain areas

USA: The United States of Automobiles - National Archives Foundation- Great article on American city planning and why we revolve around automobiles so much as a country.

History articles on the rise of the automobile in the US- 

Greenhouse gas emissions from cars

Historical documents about city layouts and segregation

 
 
 

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