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The Sorry State of Transport in America

June 3, 2009

Posted by: Carol

Daron Dierkes, who has lived abroad for three years, posted this on MyCity last night comparing U.S. transportation with that in Asia:

"I have lived abroad for about three years now. I spent a year in Seoul, a few months in Barclelona and around, and the past year and a half in Singapore.

"O'Hare Airport (Chicago) is usually my way in and out of the country. When I came home for Christmas last year, after a week layover in Hong Kong, I found America really quite depressing. I'm now used to good transportation, shiny new things, fast trains, good service, and all that stuff that is common in Asia.

"How was my return?

"The airport - old, simple, empty, cold. The night before I had slept in Hong Kong's airport. The comparison is dramatic. O'Hare needs a few million in rennovations. I was pleased to see that there was a sax player right where he was the year before blasting out christmas tunes.

"The train - I needed to take the train from the airport to downtown to meet up with some friends. At first, I found myself looking at the rather ancient ticket vending machine and gulping. I had no small change and naturally turned to the station agent. He tells me how to find a small shop where I can buy some gum and get change. This is unacceptable. I did finally get on the train, only to remember that the trains are ancient, cramped, and dirty. Within a minute, a crazy man sat next to me and told me about the angel on my shoulder while drooling on my sleeve. At my destination, heavy bags in hand, I realized there were no escalators, no station map, and no help at all from anyone. Wait, did I mention the train stalled for about a half hour? It did.

The bus - I needed to go from Chicago the next day by Megabus to St. Louis. In Korea and most major cities outside of North America, there are bus termnials for that kind of thing. In Singapore, most subway stops have a massive bus interchange--airconditioned too. Megabus is a budget operation of course. Even in London's Victoria Station, they occupied something of an alleyway. In Chicago though, they just pull up somewhere near Union Station and you have to march around to find it. From a random spot on the side of the road in the freezing cold, a man roughly threw my bag in the undercarriage, and we stood in the snow waiting as each of us read off a number to the driver to be allowed onboard.

"The return trip - would you believe it? My flight from Chicago to Hong Kong was cancelled. I was given an alternate route. i flew to Houston, then San Franscisco, then Hong Kong. On my landing in Houston, I noted once more that Americans are horrible at changing light bulbs in their signs. United Airways was on the side of a building as United ir ways. Yes, America is a land of decaying things badly in need of repair.

"What American cities like Chicago need if they are to be great, is better and seamless transportation. I've done this a few times, so I knew the way. It isn't that Chicago is to blame, all American cities are this way. I seem to remember some horrible bathrooms and panhandling in a New York greyhound station. I was dropped in downtown Philidelphia on a random street corner. In Philly I found that there were three different rail operators that all required different tickets and time consuming nonsense. There was no integration at all.

"It should be the duty of a major city to integrate all forms of express intercity transportation to and from that city. There is no reason these things cannot be done quickly and comfortably. Intercity high speed rail is one more option on the table that should be followed up on. The stations themselves though must be connected to the rest of the transit network.

"Lastly, and this is a pet peeve I have for the whole world. I know train networks do most of their maintenance at night. I also happen to know that humans are awake and needing transportation 24 hours a day. For a system like the ones in Seoul and Singapore to simply shut down at midnight and leave people stranded and in need of a taxi is horrible. There should be drasticallly reduced service, but not no service. A shorter train that runs only every 20 or 30 minutes would be fine.

"Wait... that's the other thing. In cities like St. Louis, transit users put up with a lot of nonsense. Bus waits can be two or three hours, and train waits up to twenty minutes. That's absurd! A real city should have more frequent service on the order of five to ten minutes. Less is possible and done elsewhere."