Friday, August 26, 2005

Trains, planes and automobiles

The corridor from Washington, DC to New York is well traveled, probably too well traveled. Last weekend a round trip to Baltimore, some 200 miles total took six and half hours. Given that most of distance was on interstates, we should have been able to do the trip in about four hours. Our average speed was just over 30 mph - and there were no major accidents, just volume and a fender bender off to the side.

Today I took the train down to Washington DC, 40 miles further away. The entire trip, office door to my hotel, local train to Amtrak to Metro, took just over three hours for an average speed of about 45 mph. And we spend $35 billion a year on the highway system (nationally - add in the local contributions and it's yet more)? The system seems near collapse in some locations - the I-95 corridor being one of them. Invest in trains.