Reactionary

I’d been planning all week to go into New York City this weekend for a shopping visit, as I’ve shopped the city I live in to death. The train’s the most painless way to get into Manhattan. So I went to the main rail station since it’s the only place where you can purchase tickets for the second half of the trip (it’s run by another rail company). I thought I’d allotted enough time and got there 20 minutes before the next train was supposed to leave. As I had assumed, there was a queue of people at the machine. Count it, ONE flipping ticket machine for the entire train station. But there are FOUR Pepsi machines, so when the train leaves you because you’ve waited too long in line, at least you won’t be thirsty.

It’s no secret what happened. Some wench got in front of me as I pulled up into the line. According to my time estimate, we still had time so I didn’t mind much. But then people were taking like 5 minutes each for the piece of crap machine to print out their tickets. Just as it was my turn, I heard the Trenton train announced. Machinery has no heart and the ancient piece of junk took forever to print out my tickets and by the time I grabbed them and ran onto the platform, the last car was just pulling out. I was beyond furious. Especially as the next train wasn’t until an hour later. And I figured it would be better to wait until the next week to take advantage of time. It takes 2.5 hours to get there anyway. New York City Penn Station is 83 miles away.

What the bloody hell? 2.5 HOURS for 80 MILES??? What is this, 1912 for speeds to be that dastardly slow? It’s 2005 for God’s sake and yet trains in this country can’t get from here to there without shuddering and crawling every foot of the way. There’s no American equivalent for France’s TGVs and Japanese supersonic trains. For a place like the Northeast corridor from Boston to DC, there’s no excuse for there not being a better public transport system. There are thousands of students, thousands of commuters and no one’s said anything about it? Nothing’s been done about it? This rail system hasn’t changed since it was built over 100 years ago even though the people traveling on it can only have increased. Is it a side effect of the American mindset of You Are What You Own? Driving is considered a must, both to inflate an already enormous ego and to have something to bitch about. With rising gas prices, it only makes sense for people to grow a brain already and use public transport. It’s interesting to hear people complaining about gas prices when they’ve been higher in Europe for longer.

Back to the subject, it’s amazingly stupid for this to have happened, 7 people were in line at the one sad machine. True, I should have checked the new schedule in the morning before I left (they’d moved up the train departure by 8 minutes) and I should have gotten there earlier, but it doesn’t change that they stupidly have only ONE very slow machine available… but enough over-sweetened carbonated water to chug down while you’re waiting.

I’ll have to wait until next weekend for New York and hopefully the weather will hold or I’m really going to be pissed off.

Posted on April 16th, 2005 under Life, Rant •  Print •  Email • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed