Travel as it should be.

Through the second World War the two powerhouse cities of the United States were New York and Chicago, after you got your education in Boston. Be it finance, marketing, commodities or industrial prowess, all you could ever need was to be found in and around these magnificent cities with Chicago arguably home to the finest high rise architecture on the planet. Thus there was much demand for high end travel between the two cities and, without a doubt, the travel method of choice was the Twentieth Century Limited train which ran between Grand Central in New York and La Salle Station in Chicago.

The route today.

In the last days of steam the New York Central commissioned the premier industrial designer of the time, Henry Dreyfuss, to skin the steam train in Art Deco splendor, which commission Dreyfuss discharged with aplomb, giving us this:

Dreyfuss’s take on the Twentieth Century Limited, 1938.

The trip from New York took 16 hours by 1945 when powerful – if unromantic – diesel-electrics replaced steam. The successful executive would board the Twentieth Century at the world’s most magnificent (to this day!) interior space, Grand Central Station, repairing to the dining car, after cocktails with the boys in the lounge. Women still knew their place was in the kitchen and the nursery, or as decoration for powerful spouses when called for.

Grand Central – the main concourse.

If you were Roger O. Thornhill (“The ‘O’ stands for nothing”), busy Madison Avenue marketing executive in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller ‘North by Northwest’, on the lam from the law, then your dinner companion would be Eva Marie-Saint, the epitome of cool blonde elegance, and your main course would be suggested by her:

“Any suggestions?” “The brook trout. A little trouty, but quite good”.

And there you have the finest train scene, bar none, ever made for the movies.

The fare was $2,500 in today’s money for a sleeper berth with the comforting knowledge that you would arrive on time.

Your tax dollars at work. Amtrak today.

Amtrak wants $566 today for the trip from NYC’s awful Penn Station with the proviso that you may never arrive. The travel time is now 3 hrs more.

With the introduction of Boeing’s 707 jet aircraft in the late 1950s the Twentieth Century Limited was doomed, Americans forever confusing motion with action. Now they opted to be treated like sardines and the misery of air travel continues to grow to the present day. So instead of arriving at 8am, well rested in your sleeping berth and well fed and entertained, ready for a day’s work, you now arrive frazzled many times faster as you search out yet another miserable hotel in your struggle to make that breakfast meeting. And, of course, it’s all far cheaper, which means that crowd sizes are ever greater and airline legroom ever shorter.

Those who have no need to travel now do so all the time and the results is nothing short of misery and premature death from stress. And airlines reward these traveling salesmen with …. frequent flier miles, which sounds like adding insult to injury.

For more stunning images from what may be Hitchcock’s greatest movie, click here. Interestingly, as this was made in 1959, the movie foretells the demise of train travel, the culprit being the ‘Northwest’ in the title.

Scooters rule!

The best parking spot, always.

Much of America enjoys over 300 sunny days a year. Here, in southern Arizona, that number exceeds 350. Yet the first time visitor will be struck by two things – the near total absence of solar panels and the rarity of scooters. The first is attributable to the usual panoply of corrupt interests which care nothing for the environment – home builders, ‘bought’ councilmen, crooked utility companies unwilling to see their revenues (and the CEO’s compensation) fall.

All the usual arguments are made, especially that solar is just another tax on the poor working man, and the heck with his children’s lungs. The second is tribute to the automotive and fossil fuel oligopolies who see to it that public transportation remains something used solely by the lowest economic demographic – because it is truly awful – while the oligarchs in the middle east petrostates and their Russkie soulmates keep the price of oil as high as possible. And because, you know, everyone needs a 5,000 lb gas guzzling monster tearing up the roads and gulping fuel with no tax penalty.

The scooter solves many of those ills and would cause an economic tsunami were it to overcome the multitude of capitalist interests which keep it cowed and unknown. Think about it – a cheap ($3,000 for my new Honda PCX150, a price which would halve with volume production), economical (100mpg on regular gas), easy to operate (all automatic), low maintenance transportation tool which requires minimal parking space, has very low insurance costs, attracting nothing but goodwill and would see the price and use of fossil fuels halve were it to reach critical mass, meaning 100 million daily commuters.

A not insignificant side benefit would be the economic collapse of the petrostates which are sworn to the destruction of the United Sates, so not only would they have no money for war, the Pentagon’s budget could be halved to $300 billion and we know that our politicians could find some more constructive use for the money saved. Heck, why not blow it on high speed rail? The USA motorcycle and scooter count is under 10 million and I would venture a guess that fewer than half that number is in daily use. Somewhat distant from ‘critical mass’ in a nation where the average household prides itself on two gas guzzling SUVs, the ones parked in the driveway as the garage is too small.

However, as the parking lot at my local restaurant/grocery store/hardware emporium invariably discloses precisely zero scoots when I show up, I suppose I should not complain, as I always get the best parking spot.

Scooters in Saigon, VietNam.

As for this image, I see very little to complain about.