Bring Back The Trains

I had the New York City subway map memorized by the time I was four years old. I remember how I loved the spaghetti-like interconnections that the brightly colored lines made and how I would pore over my dad’s collections of old maps for hours and hours. I remember riding with my mom to the end of each and every subway line, craning my neck to see out the window as other trains sped by. I remember sitting in the driver’s seat of the model bus at the transit museum, feeling powerful and in awe.

So many of my first friendships were based around trains. My friends and I would spend countless hours building sprawling models with our wooden toy tracks or coming up with schedules for trains that existed only in our head. It was all we could talk about. We were enthralled.

In recent years, I have realized how little we knew about how the transportation world works. Few adults share that same feeling of child wonder and excitement at the thought of a bus or train, and even those who do are too quick to slip out their phones to order an Uber or a Lyft. In some cases, the lack of childish glee goes far beyond that, morphing into racial animosity and stigmatization. In the 1970s, as Atlanta unveiled its new rail line, MARTA, opponents took to calling it “Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta.” Even in just my first few months at Washington University, I have heard people make similarly reasoned (if less offensive) remarks about the buses and rail lines in St. Louis, with friends cautioning that the Metro is unsafe or full of vagabonds. I have run into juniors and seniors who have not even stepped foot onto the train before.

For too many people, the assumption is that people only use public transportation if they have no other option. In many cases, this assumption is flawed. Public transportation can benefit us all, even those who have other options. At home in New York City, we complain about the buses and subways with love and care, constantly challenging our elected officials to improve the system. The subway is a social equalizer. If a train gets delayed, everyone is on the same boat. Angry Wall Street executives and Columbia professors stand crowded next to frustrated janitors and fast food workers—no one has anywhere else to go.

In 2016, St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger announced his staunch opposition to the proposed “Northside-Southside” MetroLink expansion, which would have brought immense benefit to underprivileged communities throughout the county. Stenger pontificated with rhetoric about extensive cost and lack of city-county cooperation, but it was clear that more was at stake than a simple disagreement between municipality executives. Residents in the Western, wealthier parts of the county, predominantly white, did not want their tax dollars going to assist poorer, mainly African-American people in the city and Northern parts of the county.

In some cases, there are good reasons why people have these predispositions against buses and trains. Weekend wait times for MetroLink trains are twenty minutes and the weekday waits are not much better. Bus lines run just two or three times per hour and often get stuck in woefully slow traffic. These are perfectly valid reasons to want to avoid public transportation. Yet, they do not mean that we should give up hope and simply abandon these alternatives.

[su_pullquote align=”right”]Rather than abandoning public transportation, we should fight to make it better.[/su_pullquote]Rather than abandoning public transportation, we should fight to make it better. There is no reason why we cannot find solutions that benefit both the West County business commuters and the North County minimum wage commuters. I do not want to accept the way things are now as the reality for the entire future. I want to bring back that delight, the happy memories that once accompanied all things that moved.

[su_pullquote]Let’s destroy the stigma that surrounds the Metro.[/su_pullquote]One thing that we can do as Wash U students is destroy the stigma that surrounds the Metro. If you are going to Brentwood for the Galleria, take the Metro. If you are going to the Central West End for dinner, take the Metro. It is quick, and it is free for us. The best way to demonstrate that more funding should go to public transportation is to actually use it.

[su_pullquote]Let’s allow the next generation’s memories of childhood fascination with transportation to become the new reality.[/su_pullquote]It is unreasonable to imagine that many people will rekindle their childhood love affairs with public transportation. It is reasonable, however, to expect that we can work toward public transportation systems that come closer to matching the realities that I once thought they did. Let’s invest more intelligently and efficiently in public transportation. Let’s spend more time and effort finding a way to make buses and trains work for as many people as possible. Let’s allow the next generation’s memories of childhood fascination with transportation to become the new reality.

Matthew Friedman ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences He can be reached at matthewfriedman@wustl.edu.