We didn’t know the territory

In the movie version of Iowa’s best-known musical, “The Music Man,” the opening scene is a Rock Island Railroad passenger car filled with over a dozen salesmen bouncing down the tracks to River City, Iowa, convinced that Harold Hill “doesn’t know the territory.”

That was the passenger train I took from Iowa City to high school organizations’ meetings in Des Moines or Chicago. During the 1950s I could ride the “Katy” line directly to Austin, Texas, and back.

From the time the first train reached Iowa City on Jan. 3, 1856, to the first American locomotive to exceed 100 mph in 1893, and our country’s 254,000 miles of track by 1916, trains were once Americans’ first choice for travel.

That enthusiasm continues today in over 20 countries. Their passenger trains go 124 to 221 miles per hour, starting with Japan’s “bullet train” I rode in the 1960s, up to the world’s record 357 mph French TGV on April 3, 2007. Going from city center to city center, avoiding the time and frustration of going to, through, and from airports, high speed rail is cheaper and almost as fast as flying.

In 1994 a group of eminent scientists warned China that relying on cars and highways was a mistake, citing the loss of cropland for feeding its people. They recommended instead rail, buses and bicycles — with the added benefits of improving climate change, air pollution, crowded highways, and transportation for those who can’t afford cars.

Today China has two-thirds of the world’s high-speed railroads.

And what do we have?

With 278 million vehicles traveling over 4 million miles of highways, filling up at 145,000 gas stations, using 40 million acres of farmland for roads and parking lots, we’ve created one of the biggest road networks of any country — and the primary cause of climate change.

How could Americans get so far off-track? Like some Facebook users characterize their relationship, “it’s complicated.”

In the 1920s capitalists saw the potential profits from car sales. Americans sought the prestige of the latest technology: car ownership. Teenagers sought the freedom they provided. Politicians liked the contributions and votes from government highway construction. And few cared when GM tore up the tracks in Los Angeles and opened car dealerships — ignoring the transportation needs of those who couldn’t afford cars.

Americans, once in love with passenger rail, had found a shinier new lover.

To travel America today everyone must, in effect, buy, drive and care for their own locomotive. In some congested areas cars move slower — and at far greater cost — than the horse and buggy they replaced. Only 20% of Americans can afford new cars, at $50,000. What’s your time driving worth? Add the costs of fuel; tolls, licenses and taxes; insurance; maintenance and repairs; home garages and parking elsewhere and, as attributed to Sen. Dirksen, “You’re talking real money.”

How did it happen? Maybe we just “didn’t know the territory.”

Nicholas Johnson, logging thousands of bicycle miles, never bought a new car. Contact mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org