Bringing Sexy Back to Train Travel

My latest obsession? Riding the rails. I’ve always been a fan of traveling by train: I especially adore the way the passive motion evokes creativity and a state of dreaminess. When I think of trains, I conjure images of Hitchcock. (Like Eva Marie-Saint and Cary Grant’s upper berth rendezvous in North By Northwest.) I fell truly, madly and deeply in love with trains during my requisite post-college tour of Europe. I was absolutely smitten.

Traveling by train is one of the greenest ways to get around. Our railways are powered by electricity, so there’s no need for dirty, expensive petroleum. It’s true that coal fires a big part of the electric grid in the States, but it’s still better than millions of us riding around in our own cars, paying for foreign oil. Public transport puts us all together in one place, and moves us en masse. Flying (aside from using massive amounts of non-renewable, polluting fossil fuel) is grossly inconvenient, frustrating, and increasingly dangerous. And although biking is awesome, you can’t really get from Philly to DC on your Cannondale. Amtrak has figured out how to do it right with their Acela trains (and big bonus: they have wifi).

So why don’t we ride trains in the good ole’ USA? For one, it’s because we’re car-obsessed. We eschew the social domain of the train for our metal boxes with our personal cup-holders and our private worlds. But what if we saw things differently? What if the train were a place to meet new people and have new experiences? I want to have a conversation about a new kind of mile-high club — one built for a new relationship with rail travel. Think about the bullet train and let your mind go wild. You may be inspired by the insanely sexy Virgin Trains in the UK. We all have different taste, but I think Joe Biden and Ed Rendell’s ideas about building up our infrastructure are tres sexy. Let’s help them take it to the next level.