A recent AP article began, “Businesses that might bid to build a high-speed rail network across California are questioning whether there will be enough government funding to complete the complex and ambitious project.” Could high speed rail happen here? Yes, with government-industry cooperation.
I recently spent two weeks travelling in Japan, a country that has enjoyed high speed rail for fifty years. I rode the “bullet train” on three occasions with my guide, a former exchange student Yoshikazu who lived with my family for a year in the 1960s. A typical trip, from Tokyo to Kyoto (a little more than 200 miles) took three and a half hours and cost a hundred and twenty-five dollars.
The train is clean, quiet, has plenty of leg room, wide aisles and always is on time. Astonishingly, the bullet trains have never suffered a fatal accident – in fifty years! Japan’s conventional trains operate just as efficiently, only at slower speeds, about sixty to eighty miles an hour.
If Americans are to enjoy high speed rail perhaps the most difficult hurdle to be overcome is our Reganoia. We will have to move beyond Reagan's "government is the problem" mantra, the self-contradictory mentality that the government is comprised of a bunch of artless duds who nevertheless are clever enough to plan and carry out complex plots to take our guns and condemn conservatives to re-education camps. In time, the anti-government illness that infects those who survive on Social Security and Medicare will fade from the national landscape. Wiser heads will prevail. They always do.
But let it go. Wonderful memories of Japan remain. Steadily guided by loyal friend and mentor Yoshi, I explored bustling Tokyo, with its eleven million souls, each of them polite to a fault. We moved on to Kyoto with its gleaming Golden Pavilion, a sort of getaway nest for the shogun and its the old imperial palace. Solemn and reverent, in Hiroshima the atom bomb memorial reminded us of the horrors of war. There were the ancient castle at Matsue and the temples at Nara and Kamakura, the latter with its huge Buddha that often is seen in films. And there were the cities of Nikko and Yokohama, the largest seaport.
Additional impressions remain. Happily, there is no litter on the streets. I walked the cities seeing perhaps one piece of litter per day. Equally strange, I am sure that more than once I carried a gum wrapper for a couple of hours without finding a trash can. “People carry it home and recycle,” Mr. Sakogawa advised.
Another fact: In cities with millions of residents, I saw a cop perhaps twice a day. Why is that? Could it relate to the fact that almost no one may legally pack a gun?
Another observation. I saw perhaps one overweight person per day, in cities with millions of people! Perhaps that is due mainly to diet, which contains few sweets. Or maybe it’s due to how chopsticks limit caloric intake. I learned to get by with the cruel excuses for utensils but had difficulty understanding why Japan, a nation bursting with technological advances in electronics, transportation and more, would hang on to them. “Tradition,” Explained Yoshi. OK, but hand me a fork.
Japan, I loved it. Perhaps we will discover that in a country the size of the U.S, there always will be a need for some form of organization, known as government. The nutty government haters can live in isolated tribes if they wish, but I like some organization, some efficiency, some well maintained roads to drive on, some national parks, some officials to monitor the food we eat and the air we breathe and the medicines we take. And I like capitalism, provided it is well regulated. And I'd like high speed rail in the U.S. why should a nation that we consigned to utter defeat well more than a half century ago now be far ahead of us in public transportation? There are several factors involved, none more problematic than Reaganoia.
Reganoia: The self-contradictory belief that government is comprised of artless duds who nevertheless are clever enough to carry out schemes to take our guns and confine conservatives to re-education camps. Reganoia is an infection that mainly strikes those who are older, white and who survive on social Security and Medicare benefits.