Why the Lehigh Valley Won’t Get Train Service; Rail Is Just Part of the Transit Puzzle, and Europe is Not the Model

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

When people discuss trains, “magical thinking” prevails.

All aboard! Spend $1 billion, pay millions of dollars in annual subsidies, and voila!

Not so. And while many people look to Europe as the model, they’re missing the bigger picture.

Trains are just part of public transit in Europe. There is a network of buses, ferries, light rail and trams that supports the trains, even in small towns.

Go to a suburban U.S. train station, and you’ll see a parking lot. Sometimes fairly small, as in Raritan, New Jersey, along the NJTransit line to New York City. Sometimes, acres and acres of blacktop, as at Secaucus Junction, the last stop before Penn Station.

Go to Europe, and often there is little or no parking. They get to trains on foot, by cab and by public transit, mostly buses.

So it’s not as simple as, “Build it, and they will come.”

We spent a week in Monaco in May and took the French SCNF south rail line along the Riviera, west to Nice and east into Italy. There were no big parking lots. There were buses everywhere, fast and mostly clean, cabs (all Teslas in Monaco) and Nice’s bus service is supplemented by a leisurely tram, something locals referred to as the slow walk.

We spent our last night in Nice, across the street from the airport. We had an airport view and a sea view, because Nice Cote d’Azur Airport is built on land claimed from the water. Just outside the hotel door was a bus, and a block away, the tram.

When I asked when the bus would show up, the woman at the front desk just said, “They come all the time.” The same with the tram. Just hang out, one will be there, sort of like U.S. subways.

The U.S. cast its lot with passenger cars long ago. Putting up a train line isn’t going to change that.

Don’t indulge in magical thinking and don’t expect the public to drop $1 billion or so on a project that is doomed to lose money.

So, spend lots of money forever on a train that is not needed? No.

Spend a few thousand dollars on a trip to the Riviera? Definitely.