Streetsblog Los Angeles

Amtrak is back on the air with a new commercial that uses children's toys to make the point that taking a long distance trip via train is far less stressful and more enjoyable than either driving or flying.  While I personally never lined all my matchboxes up in three parallel lines to create a traffic jam in the living room, I guess it's a sign of the times.

The bulk of the commercial shows young boys playing with their toy cars and planes while uttering adult complaints about life trapped in car culture and airports.  The last couple seconds of the ad show another youngster happily playing with a model train zooming around happier toys and proclaiming, "The train has now arrived."  From there, a narrator takes over, "The train has arrived indeed.  Amtrak, enjoy the journey."

Personally, I laughed at one kid glumly wondering, "I wonder how much gas costs today" as his toy car pulled into a plastic gas station.  The chortle was matched followed shortly by another going "An extra bag costs WHAT?!?" as his plastic figurine put on a shocked face.

Over the past year we've seen a spate of advertisements about how wonderful traveling by bicycle is compared to car from health insurance companies, banks and others; so it's nice to see train service promoting itself likewise.  We'll know we arrive when well meaning celebrities shoot commercials about turning off your lights on trains instead of airplanes.

h/t Carfree USA

The Washington Post today has a piece summing up Joe Biden's ties to Amtrak. There's not a lot of new material in the story (Biden takes the train between Delaware and DC, he has a pro-rail record in the Senate, his son serves on the Amtrak board, etc.), but what caught our attention was a quote from David Johnson of the National Association of Railroad Passengers.

Johnson said an Obama-Biden victory wouldn't necessarily translate into an avalanche of federal funds for Amtrak. He noted that Al Gore was a big booster of passenger rail when he was in Congress "and yet some of the biggest cuts in service came during the Clinton-Gore administration." 

In 2000, President Bill Clinton proposed a $989 million funding package for Amtrak. According to the Post, the FY 2008 Amtrak allocation was around $1.3 billion.

Photo: relvax/Flickr

Like Joe Biden, Barack Obama also mentioned Amtrak in his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention, but only in reference to his running mate’s preferred mode of transportation.

There were many, many things to be excited about yesterday, but any livable streets advocate anticipating a call to rebuild and expand our nation’s transit infrastructure, or for more investment in clean transportation and sustainable urban development, had to be a little disappointed. In fact, as the New York Observer notes, Obama barely mentioned infrastructure at all, and only then to promise "new roads." And as for energy policy:

As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal
technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I’ll help
our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the
future are built right here in America. I’ll make it easier for the
American people to afford these new cars. And I’ll invest 150 billion
dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy
– wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an
investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs
that pay well and can’t ever be outsourced.

Are biofuels, more roads, and easier paths to car ownership really the "change" this country, or the planet, needs? Not even Al Gore or the "We" campaign, with its ubiquitous ads, mentioned altering development or driving habits.

So as Americans celebrate a long weekend of cheaper gas, we leave you with this: How do we do it? How do we seize the "Obama moment," as this call to action by OurFuture.org terms it, to make clean transportation, livable streets, smart growth and the kinds of issues that we care about a part of the national discussion on climate change and energy policy?

Until Tuesday … 

Photo: Barack Obama/Flickr