Trains are in this hazy transition period. It's both the beginning of an era. And an end of era, for trains.
I rode the new Northstar commuter train over the weekend from Minneapolis out to the end of the line and back.
It's the end of an era. There were families and older people on the train on Saturday. No one was commuting. Everyone was taking the kids or wife for an old fashioned fun train ride. But it's the end of the tourist leisure train rider. It's like the Sunday drive of decades ago, when men took the family for a leisurely Sunday drive. Soon everyone will be riding trains so often, no one will consider it a treat like the kids in the picture did.
In a transition statement that describes both the end and the beginning, one young kid in the picture said, "This is sweet. Let's ride it more often."
It's the beginning of an era. Being naive, I was shocked that the train did not stop in the middle of towns, but on the outskirts, surrounded by subdivisions, even no divisions, just fields. Every top had parking lots for about 100 cars. But that's not the future. The future is not commuting. The future is building apartment buildings and townhouses for 10,000 people within 12 blocks of the train station. So far, it did not look like any city had even thought about rezoning the area around the train station.
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