I was exchanging texts last night with someone in Ohio who was surprised when I said that the U.S. doesn’t have a true high speed train. “What about Acela,” he messaged. It’s true that Acela is Amtrak’s fastest train. It’s used on the so-called Northeast corridor (Washington-New York-Boston). And for a few rather short stretches,…
Three years ago I was in Paris and having something to eat in one of the several street corner cafés within a two-minute walk from my hotel. It was a weekday evening, but every table was taken, both inside the restaurants and spilling out onto the sidewalk. It was the same every night I was…
Americans don’t understand high-speed trains—where they work and where they don’t. And why. And no wonder! A very small percentage of Americans haveever seen a high-speed train, much less traveled on one. Amtrak’s Acela trains operating in the Washington-New York-Boston corridor average 80-plus miles-per-hour and top out at about 150 along a rather short…
Paris, like many other cities, has a program providing the occasional use of a bicycle at no charge. As you can see from the photo I took yesterday, there don’t seem to be any takers. Would I ride a bike out there in Paris traffic? Only if I had a serious death…