5.15.2009

Older is better

As newspapers (the old way of spreading news) fall to the Internet (the new way), I found this Slate article about train travel very interesting. It's a classic case of the old way being more efficient and enjoyable, even though most people would think trains are better left in the past.

Note the 220-m.p.h. speed of a train in China, and how much faster mail could get around the U.S. on a rail system than by plane. Those are just two interesting observations I found in this article.

If trains were brought back in their most luxurious, efficient form, it could take a lot of congestion off the highways and avoid a lot of the fear when traveling by air.

But the same questions face trains as those that face newspapers: is the system to stuck in one way to be upgraded to a modern model? Now that it has been trimmed back to its 1881 form (see the article), can rail travel ever be great again?

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