Our Exceptional US Infrastructure

Just before I left for a trip to England last month, an Amtrak train left the tracks north of Philadelphia, killing eight and injuring more than 200. It was not a high speed train—we don’t have those in the US. In fact we don’t have many passenger train lines in this country, and the accident ironically precipitated another round of let’s cut funding to Amtrak from a Congress which has chronically underfunded passenger train service. Congress also continues to balk at taking up consideration of a well thought out national infrastructure policy, which would support the nation’s future economic growth. You see infrastructure spending of any kind looks like low hanging fruit to cut for the don’t-raise-taxes crowd, which continues to hold the country’s prospects hostage.

Now the United Kingdom just had an election which put a Conservative majority into power. But while the Brits have been preaching austerity and struggling with their own economic malaise, they have been paying attention to infrastructure needs. You see the impact of that attention immediately on arriving at Heathrow’s relatively efficient new Terminal 5 where you can choose between various railway and underground options to get into central London within less than a half hour. Once in the city without leaving the mass transit system you can connect into reliable railway lines that can take you to all points of the country and even into Europe via the high speed Chunnel service. All the railway stations I visited had excellent signage, tickets were easy to buy, and trains were clean and kept close to schedule to make connections. Stations had good food options too, although it’s a pain to have to pay to use a toilet facility. But I guess that helps pay the way, and oh by the way tickets were not cheap, although trains were generally packed.