The trip segment from Frankfurt to Paris in the front coach of the needle-nosed ICE train was a unique experience. It is difficult to describe the sensation of traveling smoothly and quietly at 320km/hr at ground level. Adding to this was the fact that a clear glass partition separated the driver from the passenger compartment and the access door was left open. It was therefore possible to actually share the sights and sounds of driving the train.

Of course, in North America, this would be absolutely unthinkable. More likely, an impenetrable bulkhead keeping the driver safe from would-be terrorist attacks would be deemed essential.

But why does the Deutsche Bahn ICE train not have a secure bulkhead? Are passengers silently screened for their fear and threat potential before they board? Or have the Europeans really put such things in their full perspective and decided that it's much more important to showcase their technology and add value to the passenger experience than humiliating and locking them away in a tube-shaped moving prison for a few hours?

In North America, our transportation security agencies would fret uncontrollably with several hundred "uninspected" people on a high-speed train. At the same time nearly 40,000 people on this continent die in highway collisions, about 125,000 are terminated by bullet wounds and overdoses of various substances, while obesity is reckoned to claim an additional 400,000 annually. Probably three or four times that number suffer life-altering injuries from the same sources.

So, why the difference in security philosophy? Why are we not more proactive about the real killers on this continent? Perhaps the Europeans are quite happy to level the playing field of potential doom while we in North America appoint biased referees to handle the politics and economics of the public safety game. Is this manipulation or mind control on a grand scale or are our societal and economic models fundamentally flawed?

If we are not there on risk, we are certainly not there on travel options either. The infrastructure deficit in North America is reckoned to be almost $2 trillion. Successive governments have ignored this, preferring instead to spend money on killing people, subsidizing dying industries, biofuels and other such tragic frivolities. Vote-buying tax cuts abound while construction equipment lays idle. High-paying jobs and expertise continue to disappear.

But on a high-speed train, you are reminded that travel is more than just sterile highways and financially precarious airlines. Perhaps this is why just about every country, except English-speaking ones, is making high-speed rail a travel option. Indeed, airlines are using high-speed rail to feed their long-haul airport hubs instead of short-haul planes. Contrast that with North America, where anyone mentioning a penchant for Amtrak or VIA Rail is considered, well, er, odd.

Yes, studies have been done here for high-speed rail but they gather dust. Ask any politician why this mobility option never sees the light of day and the old chestnuts of population distribution/density and demand roll out of the fire. If they represent a riding dependent on the auto sector for jobs, or have strong highway or airport construction lobby, this subject would be considered utterly taboo.

And yet voters in cities like Windsor and Kitchener-Waterloo, where the departure of the auto sector and flattening of the tech sector threatens long-term economic decline, might now have a different view. Perhaps they would understand that sustainable jobs and economic renewal are facilitated by modern railways and that city centre and urban decay are largely avoidable if they are served by something other than grid-locked, crumbling highways, infrequent, clapped-out trains and distant airports. Not convinced? Just look at Leeds or Sheffield in the United Kingdom. They were doomed as post-industrial cities but now thrive as commercial centres, largely because of good rail connections. Similar examples abound in many post-industrial economies

My ICE train and the track it was running on were indicative of the future of mobility in the rest of the world. These are not big-boy toys, but tools to keep the countries in which they run highly competitive and resilient in a rapidly changing world. The Europeans and Asians have figured that out. Attractive and functional passenger spaces, through-ticketing, cooperation with airlines and reduced journey times, are driving ridership gains. While our elected representatives use the demand argument negatively, other countries struggle to cope with it.

The man on the Clapham omnibus has indeed come a long way. Casual observation has evolved into deeper thought. That we North Americans are "not there yet" on our journey can no longer be dismissed as mere nuisance from a few concerned passengers. It is now quite clear that we are being left behind in the new world economic order. Sharecropping courses, anyone?

Ken Westcar is a member of the Transport 2000 Ontario HSR committee, and a traveller at large.
 
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