I’m not sure if an opinion piece is appropriate here, so please let me know if this doesn’t fit the theme of the community, and I’ll avoid sharing such thoughts in the future.
I’m extremely frustrated with the car centric culture in my area. I live about 25 miles west of a quarry. Every day I watch trains go up and down the railroad mostly carrying gravel. This railroad stretches for several hours by car in each direction, connecting several large cities and even passing a few tourist attractions, and despite our traffic congestion problems there is little interest in trying to use this rail for actual people.
One company moved in and started running a new passenger rail service. Within a few weeks, we had protesters at the railroads complaining that drivers don’t understand railroad crossings. I saw posters about how trains were killing residents when drivers park on the tracks and get hit. I don’t understand! Where do you think the train is going to go? They don’t exactly come out of nowhere. They follow the tracks! And we’ve always had trains passing through our town before. At a later local election a candidate ran on the premise that they’re going to protect home values and our children by reducing or eliminating the number of trains passing through our town. This candidate did win our local election and sadly they succeeded in cutting down on rail investment.
Fast-forward a couple years later. Passenger rail stations were built at the endpoints of this rail to ferry tourists. I drive parallel to this rail on the way to work several times per week for almost 45 minutes each way, 20 minutes of which is heavy traffic. I get to enjoy watching people ride the train while there’s no stop anywhere near my house because our local government has sided with homeowners that a passenger rail station is “simply too dangerous.” I would have to drive over an hour to the nearest passenger rail station to ride the train, and I can literally see the tracks from my apartment.
Every time I see that train I feel bitter. I could save so much money if these boneheads would have let them build a train station in our town. Absolutely ridiculous! The train is there. The rail is there. I don’t understand why a train is such a personal, existential threat to your way of life.
It wouldn’t. Nor would it be unsafe. These property value fuckers are not just obnoxious but also really stupid.
There’s a neighborhood in my city right next to a light rail station. Literally, some of the houses are less than 20m from the platform. But when the station was being built the neighborhood association specifically campaigned against having any access to the station from the neighborhood. There’s a huge concrete wall blocking it off now. So if the people living in the houses literally directly next to the station wanted to get to the station they’d have to walk (or realistically, drive) over 2km across a highway, along a major road and through busy parking lots. And then, after getting to the station, they’d have to cross back under the highway to get to the actual train platform, because it’s built on their side of the highway despite being impossible to get to from that side.
Ah, it sounds like you understand my rage at the needless inefficiency. The clear and obvious solution, denied because of feelings.
All it takes to fix that is some dedicated folks with hammer and chisel.
Even the Berlin wall came down