Yesterday evening our son and I were taking a train back from Long Island on the LIRR and the trip was a great illustration of how decrepit our infrastructure is. About four minutes before train departure there was an announcement that the train was running on time. All good and we were looking forward to getting some work done on the train. Then three minutes before departure, i.e., just one minute later, a different announcer came back on to say that the train was at least 15 minutes delayed. So for starters clearly even different parts of the railroad had different information.

The train wound up leaving 20 minutes late, but then the real fun began. All train cars were insanely cold. Air conditioning run completely amok. Everyone was miserable. Some cars were just cold others felt like spending time in a subzero refrigerator. Then about a third into our trip the train stopped completely. The conductor came on over a speaker system that was barely audible announcing that there was a “signaling” problem ahead and because we were late we had to let other trains pass.

At one point we were stopped for nearly an hour. All told what was originally scheduled as a 2.5 hour trip wound up taking nearly 5 hours. Now given the distance involved this should really only have been a 1.5 hour trip to begin with – it is only about 110 miles. In summary: the combination of old train cars, tracks with broken signaling, and poorly functioning communications provided a train experience in 2016 that was bad by any standard (international or US historical).

And yet most people on the train were only moderately upset. They seemed to have accepted that this is the state of our infrastructure and nothing can (or will) be done about it. With near zero (and possibly negative) interest rates this is an utter failure of government. We should be spending to fix our bridges and tunnels, our roads and tracks and our airports. Investments now especially in road and track quality will also be a key enabler for autonomous vehicles to operate on those.