Saith Instapundit, after four days of sitting in airports for one day of conferencing:
[T]he fact is that air travel can’t be counted on to get you where you need to go when you’re supposed to be there. It’s a dysfunctional industry, and needs major fixing.
I have only three, no, four words: High-speed passenger rail.
With my usual trenchant debating point: You can’t drive a train into the side of a building.
We like to laugh at the French, but they have TGV and we don’t.
They do, indeed. And I love it as a tourist. Ditto for subways. But they pay for it with $5/gallon gasoline, which forces an eternal wartime “is this trip really necessary?” mindset on the people who actually live there.
Which is back to the old adage about free lunches.
On the other hand, Europe never gave up the corner grocer and druggist and cleaners that could be walked to. Americans have drive thru windows on everything but our hardware stores so we won’t have to get out of our cars and actually walk to the door.
I didn’t say it would or should be free, or even subsidised. It just needs to exist. If we don’t feel like paying for it, then of course it isn’t going to happen.
TANSTAAFL.
As for $5/gal. gasoline, we’ve been close to that already and it doesn’t seem to have stopped all the SUVs I see on the road.
On top of that, if gasoline really did go to $5/gal. and stayed there, I certainly hope that our automobile manufacturers might start seriously considering what they’d need to do to make driving their products affordable.
As long as I keep seeing big vehicles with sub-30MPG ratings sitting in showrooms, it’s clear to me that they aren’t taking the price of gasoline seriously.