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During the 9 months of each year that I reside in the US I’ve lived in Newton, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, yet I’ve always considered myself a Bostonian. This is because I’ve been lucky enough to live right next to a railway station, giving me the freedom to get to the city and most places around it whenever I want, on my own. Boston’s rapid transit system, called the MBTA or simply the “T” by locals, has played a significant role in my life since I was very young, empowering me to do things and go places that were totally out of reach of most kids I knew. During High School (to and from which I took the T every day) I became very interested in rail transportation systems, the infrastructure that makes them work and the way they effect the people and communities they serve. The more I learned about rail systems and the politics that surround them, the more I began to understand how dramatically different the US was from the rest of the world. Today, after years of studying and regularly using rail systems in both the US and Finland, as well as experiencing those in a number of other European countries, I think I can explain with full understanding my feelings on the current state of rail transit in America and how it compares to the rest of the world.

My Experiences in Finland:

This summer I spent a bit over two months in Finland and among other things, traveled more than I ever had before by rail. A few times each week I would travel hundreds of kilometers going between my grandmother’s house in Loimaa, my summer home in Loppi, and many other places across Finland to see family and just to travel for fun. I also spent a lot of time studying rail infrastructure first hand and talking to people about what they thought about rail in their own country and worldwide. I didn’t experience or hear anything that I hadn’t in previous years, but thinking about what I was experiencing in a new, comparative way, taught me a lot.

First off, the rail system in Finland, along with the roads and other public infrastructure, is owned and operated by the government, as is the case in all of Europe and most of Asia. Rail infrastructure in Finland is well maintained to say the least. The system exclusively employs continuously welded track, prefabricated concrete cross ties, GSM based signaling and is almost completely electrified at 25 kilovolts AC. Nearly every time I looked at a component of the system it always looked brand new, and the very few times that I saw something in disrepair, it was being fixed or replaced by workers. As for the trains themselves, they’re fast (160 to 220 km/h), spacious and always immaculate inside and out. This is all very impressive at first, but what really impressed me was the coverage of the system. There’s a little over 450 stations across Finland, laid out according to population density and designed to, in combination with municipal public bus services, ensure that every single citizen is never more than a short walk or bike ride away from a railway station. With this kind of dedication to the public good, I wasn’t surprised that Finnish rail tickets were also very cheap. For the longest trips I took (~400 km) I paid around 25 euros, and for the more common, shorter trips (~120 km) I paid around 8 euros, all of which was at full price since I didn’t yet have a college ID, which would have gotten me half price on everything.

In talking to citizens of all ages in Finland, I learned how and why this amazing network had been put in place. The attitude of everyone I talked too, and thereby logically the government as well, was that rail is a vital primary mode of transportation, and that it’s accessibility to all is of utmost importance. What I really took note of, though, was that regardless of socioeconomic status (and I talked to people spanning the whole range), everyone valued rail services as a critical aspect of their society. Rail wasn’t politics to them, it was a necessity that simply had to work for everyone without question. One person told me quite eloquently in Finnish that “The system must not only work well, but also look nice at all times, since its not just important functionally for us, but it’s the first thing that tourists see – its a reflection of our society, our values and quality of life.”

Back to The USA

My 19th summer in Finland came to an end on August third when I boarded a train to Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport and took off on a 6500 kilometer flight back to Boston. Coming back has always been a little awkward at first, but this year would be very different.

When I walked out of the main entrance to Logan International Airport’s Terminal E, I was met with a gust of humid, smog filled air and the sight of a huge line of idling taxies. I remembered that although I lived only 15 kilometers away, taking Boston’s inefficient public transit system would take over an hour and require 2 subway transfers. Unlike Europe’s airports, Boston’s has no rail connection, only a single, slow bus service called the Silver Line. Because of this, hardly anyone bothers to take the bus and taxies are the norm. My family and I took a taxi home and promptly went to sleep. The next day I began to think about buying things to take with me to college, so of course I walked across the street to the T station to head downtown. The station hadn’t changed while I was gone, but I had, and it felt very different.

The station felt abandoned. Weeds grew in-between and right through the rotting, wooden track ties, many of which had partially disintegrated due to exposure from lack of surrounding ballast. The platforms, which were on the outer sides of the double-tracked station, were simply cracked slabs of asphalt, poured without any forms right up to the outer rail on each side, making a track tie replacement impossible without braking up a large section of a platform. The overhead contact wires were supported by pairs of I-beams stuck vertically into concrete filled oil drums beside the tracks, with a third I-beam running between them from which the wires hung. Everything was rusted to such an extent that physical holes and erosions could be seen in many of the I-beam arrangements. I was appalled that this was actually a functioning station on America’s most heavily used light rail system, but things got much worse.

After waiting for 10 minutes or so, a train pulled into the station. It was a two unit train with one older “Type 7” vehicle coupled to a newer “Type 8” vehicle, a typical sight on the MBTA’s light rail lines, which use Electrical Multiple Unit vehicles. The Type 8 was looking pretty tired, with soot covering its front end and sides, and what looked like a garbage can’s worth of trash scattered around the floor inside, but the Type 7 was looking truly pathetic. Huge patches of its outer surface were bear, rusted steel, with years of layered paint chipped off all over the rest of the vehicle. This was something I’d become accustomed to in my 4 years of taking the T to school, but only now did I realize just how badly maintained the vehicles were. I boarded the Type 7 unit of the train and took a seat by a window to observe the surroundings as my trip downtown began.

Rusted, partially collapsed fences lined the edges of the right-of-way, with vines and trees encroaching and laying on the overhead electrical support structures. Trash was everywhere along the sides of the rail bed, along with abandoned maintenance equipment and construction materials. At many stations along the way, leftover asphalt from station work had been piled on top of loose tie spikes, seemingly in a feeble attempt to avoid dealing with the problem of rotting wooden ties. The thick cables that fed the overhead contact wires were strung lazily along one side of the overhead support beams, and at many times were lying on the ground or entangled in tree branches. When the train finally submerged into the subway after Fenway station, things continued to get worse. The underground stations, most of which are more than 100 years old, have had very little maintenance done during their decades of service, and it shows. Fragmented concrete makes up the walls and ceilings of the stations, with rusted steel rebar exposed in many places. Drainage pans hang from the ceilings of most stations to catch water that leaks in from the streets above through the crumbling concrete. By the time I had arrived at my stop, Park Street, I felt like I was living in a third world country.

I’ve now taken 9 roundtrips on the MBTA since returning to Boston and each time I notice to a greater extent the failure, neglect and carelessness that makes up a rail system used by 1.3 million people each day.

A Reflection of The People

About a week ago I was thinking about taking a trip down to New York City to see a friend, so naturally, I checked to see what a train ticket would cost from America’s own government-owned railroad corporation, Amtrak. I was surprised when I saw the ridiculous prices, which started at around $80 for an economy class ticket on a slow, local train. I later looked at Amtrak’s national map, which I hadn’t seen in a long time, and was shocked at the pathetic coverage, the routes and stops having clearly not changed at all since the era of exclusively private railroads. In the states that Amtrak did have lines in, there were only a few stops in each state and with extremely infrequent, slow service on long distance routes, the expensive, inaccessible network was clearly useless to the vast majority of citizens.

In talking to Americans about the total lack of practical intercity rail in the US, as well as the decaying state of the MBTA and other regional rail networks, the realizations I had made in Finland were confirmed. The condition and nature of a nation’s rail services did indeed reflect the values and beliefs of its citizens. When I talked with people in Boston – again, of all ages and socioeconomic statuses – I received one message clearly from everyone: “if you have a car or don’t have to use public transportation, why would you”? Many middle aged and older Americans even admitted to me that they would be embarrassed if they ran into one of there friends or professional contacts while using public transportation. This is the American attitude toward rail. When considering this, it makes perfect sense that national highways are cared for and funded aggressively by the government while national railways slowly rot away under regressive management and a mere trickle of funding. It becomes clear why Local governments, like the state of Massachusetts, consider there public transportation systems so low priority that they’ve been allowed to fall into sever states of disrepair.

We Are Not Alone

The United States is the only country on earth where people can and do live normal, productive lives without ever caring or knowing anything about other cultures or countries. For centuries, we have been told from cradle to grave that things in our country are the best in the world, and although that has certainly been true at times, today it is an outright lie. In order to improve rail transportation in America, we need to accept the fact that we are grossly inferior to most other developed nations in the respect, and we must eliminate the imbedded ideas of generations past from our society. The strictly American attitude of “only poor people take trains” is simply not sustainable in a world of instantaneous, free flowing information. This is indeed part of a larger evolutionary matter. America will become irrelevant in the global scope of innovation if it’s citizens remain isolated in thought. Smart people will leave and the old engine of America will, quite literally, idle until it’s fuel runs out.

Now, I certainly haven’t given up on playing a part in improving things, but fighting is tough when I know there’s a whole lot of people across the ocean with the right attitude, making more progress in a day then we make in a decade. I already decided a long time ago that I’m certainly not going to pursue a career in the US, so its only a matter of time before I’ll be installing myself permanently somewhere in the EU. Hopefully by then there’ll be a larger group of people here for me to hand the torch off too.