Coughlin Unplugged

Larkin is Right, Forget Railroad

Submitted by Dan Coughlin on Sun, 02/07/2010 - 8:45pm

I've heard complaints about my silence recently, so let me get this off my chest.

Brent Larkin was so right in the Sunday Plain Dealer about the proposed passenger train linking Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati.

I've been stupefied ever since the governor started touting it about a month ago. Strickland truly is out of touch. A sage once said, "You can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy."

Larkin points out that "trains will average about 40 mph -- not quite twice as fast as a well-conditioned bicyclist could pedal, and barely half as fast as a driver can travel on Interstate 71." The Amish travel almost as fast in their horse drawn buggies.

You can drive to Columbus via I-71 in two hours. My Camry will make the round trip on one tank of gas, $40, less than the cost of a train ticket. The train will take almost twice as long, assuming that it's on time, and then you'll take a cab or get a ride to get to where you're actually going. And you'll need a hotel room because you can't do the round trip in one day.

This is stupid. It's regressing. The federal government is offering $400 million for this project. Those screwballs in Washington must think everybody's Amish here in Ohio. Plus, we'll have to add millions more. It would be more practical to resurrect the Pony Express and the Wells Fargo stagecoach. Did somebody mention the Ohio Canal?

Larkin notes that President Obama already gave California $2.25 billion for trains that will go 220 mils an hour and Florida got $1.25 billion for a train that will go 168 miles an hour. For the suckers in Ohio, 40 miles an hour.

Obama's people must think we're really slow in Ohio. We may be slow, but not that slow.

Many years ago I rode the rails from Linndale Station on Cleveland's west side to South Bend, Ind., back and forth. Almost seven hours each way. The trains never were on time. They were cold in the winter and generally poorly maintained. On the turnpike it took three hours and 45 minutes. Is it any wonder the passenger lines virtually went out of existence? What remains is Amtrack, which according to my experience is slow and unreliable. It may be efficient on the east coast, but not here in the colonies. What Governor Strickland is proposing is not an improvement. In fact, at 40 miles an hour, it's worse.

Personal story: In 1988 I gathered five other pals for a nostalgic train trip to the big football game between Notre Dame and Miami of Florida. That's how people went to Notre Dame games in the twenties, thirties and forties, before the turnpike. It was our turn back the hands of time weekend.

We made reservations on the train leaving Cleveland at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning. It would arrive in South Bend in time to take a cab to the Notre Dame Stadium just before kickoff. Our return train left at 10 p.m. that night.

At 6 a.m., we stood at the ready, our coolers loaded with beer and sandwiches. No train. It will be a few minutes late said the lone employee on duty. Minutes passed. We grew nervous. We were on a tight time schedule. An hour passed. That was our fail safe time. We were told the train would be about four hours late. The engine broke down the other side of Buffalo.

We got our money back and jumped in Mike Gallagher's Chevy conversion van. Ohio Conference commissioner Tim Gleason, who doesn't drink, handled the driving both ways. We took a leisurely drive to South Bend and enjoyed a thrilling 31-30 Notre Dame victory en route to the national championship.

That was 22 years ago, a long time, but I have not heard that anything has improved.

Strickland is a licensed preacher, but that doesn't give him license to bamboozle us.