On Jan. 2, my twin brother and I set out from our home just north of Boston, Mass. Nine days and 3,500 miles later, we arrived at his new apartment in Los Angeles, Calif.
My brother has studied television production for three and a half years at Emerson College in Boston. He’s spending his senior spring “abroad” in LA with an internship in the industry, which is why we packed his life into the back of our car and hit the road.
Even though driving across country isn’t the most eco-friendly vacation plan out there, seeing the country by Honda Civic was a great experience. You might think that being stuck in a car with the same person for a week and a half would start to wear on you. You’re not going to believe me, but my brother and I didn’t really fight at all on the road trip. We got along great and made an excellent team driving and navigating. We don’t get to spend a lot of time together during the year since we go to different schools, so nine days in a car was surprisingly bearable, even fun.
Nine days did not give us a lot of time to visit the towns along the way, and after eight to 10 hours of driving each day, we were usually pretty exhausted by the time we reached a new city. Still, we did our best to experience what America had to offer.
One of my favorite things to do in each new city was to pick up the free weekly alternative newspaper. I love these papers for their coverage of the local arts and music scene and the glimpse they offer into local politics (which is never very flattering). I was already familiar with the Boston Phoenix, St. Louis’s River Front Times and, of course, the Independent Weekly here in Durham. By the time I got to the Memphis Flyer and the Oklahoma Gazette, I started to get a little jaded—why does every city’s “independent” newspaper look exactly the same, anyway? (But maybe that is just the sarcastic edginess of the local political commentary rubbing off on me.)
Sampling the local media was best done in the print format, because trying to listen to the radio down south is always a gamble. To be more specific, it is just as likely that any radio station you pick up will be country music or Christian rock as it is that it will be music to which the rest of the country listens.
Radio station roulette aside, the countless miles of emptiness between the major cities in the West do start to wear on you, leaving you a lot of time for contemplation. Most of my ponderings were decidedly anti-intellectual—ideas like “The Beach Boys were probably really disappointed once they started ‘Surfing USA’ and got outside of California” and “Daytona Beach would be the perfect place to stage a version of Jersey Shore with southerners instead of ‘guidos.’”
But with the Winter Forum on climate change underway on campus, I also got to thinking about the carbon footprint of my little adventure. We could have flown to Los Angeles, but then we would have shipped a lot of stuff from coast to coast. And with the urban sprawl and limited public transportation in West Coast cities like LA, you practically need a car to get around.
And while racking up frequent flyer miles is great, you would miss the local newspapers from 30,000 feet up in the air. If you want to see the states from the ground level, a car is your best option.
Some people would suggest train travel as an alternative to driving, but it’s not as attractive an alternative in this country. A map of Amtrak’s routes looks like a skeleton compared to the comprehensive fleshed-out rail systems in European countries. Often, U.S. trains are outdated and freight trains dominating the rails lead to unreliable service on Amtrak routes through heavy shipping regions.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act appropriated $80.9 billion to infrastructure improvements, including $1.3 billion for Amtrak, $100 million for other public transit agencies and $8 billion for intercity passenger rail projects and specifically high-speed rail development. Like many projects in the Act, it is unclear what level of support will be available once stimulus funds dry up.
The Acela line from Boston to Washington, D.C., via New York, currently Amtrak’s only high-speed line, has proven modestly successful in drawing passengers away from the airlines. Perhaps that success can be repeated with a Midwestern line from Chicago to St. Louis, or one between California’s major cities, but vast improvements in coast-to-coast rail travel do not appear likely in the near future, especially without continued support for Amtrak.
We are constantly surrounded by messages about globalization, but don’t forget that there are plenty of opportunities to be a tourist in your own country. I would love to recommend a EuroRail-style voyage across North America, but we’re not there yet. Keep your mind open to the idea of riding the rails across the country, as that very well might be an option in the future. But don’t wait until Amtrak gets on track; so in the mean time, take to the roads and see your country. You would be surprised all there is to see over the 3,000 miles of I-40.
Bradford Colbert is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Tuesday.
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