TRAINS, NOT PLANES

This is a quote from a story in the Washington Post on December 4, 2007:

Fort Worth, Texas --- The day started poorly for Allison Quate,
Her flight from Oklahoma to Dallas-fort Worth International Airport was severely delayed. She missed her connecting flight to Washington and spent six hours marching between terminals and gates, trying to get on another plane. They were all full.
By 5 p.m., (she) found herself standing anxiously at her fifth gate, competing with 22 other standby passengers fr a seat on the American Airlines jet bound for Washington.
"This is very disappointing" she said, just before the gate agent closed the door, forcing (her) to head to another plane. She eventually landed in Washington at 1:30 a.m., 11 hours behind schedule.
... jammed flights have changed the experience of flying. Passengers complain of less personal space as they get poked by others' elbows. Overhead bins fill up. Even bathroom lines stretch further down the aisles, frustrating those with aisle seats. And ... packed planes have upset travel plans, making it difficult for airlines to recover after disruptions."

What is wrong with the common sense of the American traveling public? Indeed, what is wrong with the common sense and leadership of our planners, politicians, and governments, that we ever allowed this situation to develop.
Certainly, I can't be the only person who remembers the comforts, speed***, and pleasures of train travel.

*** by "speed" I mean the metric for the door-to-door traveling time, taking into account aircraft runway waiting time; travel time to the nearest airport; connecting flights that don't connect; laughable security checks that ask 80-year-old church ladies to remove their shoes so that the dread phrase "profiling" is not invoked; cancellations; weather delays; overbooking; and all the other vast array of interferences with smooth, safe, enjoyable travel.

Instead, we have allowed train tracks to be ripped up for the benefit of recreation in the Rails-to-Trails travesty; freight trains to monopolize the railroad network that remains; roads jammed with automobile and truck traffic to grow beyond belief to the detriment of everything human; and the Fool's Mantra of the day to be "Walk and bicycle to work". Surely they jest!!