Amtrak will soon begin test runs to determine the feasibility of seasonal passenger train service to Rockland on the Downeaster, which now has its northern terminus in Brunswick. This is good news for anyone who has ever driven coastal Route 1 in the summer. It’s good news for all of us, really: a small sign that the Late Automobile Age is beginning to morph, however slowly, into something else.

No small city in Maine stands to benefit more from alternatives to the automobile than Rockland. It’s equidistant from almost everywhere. You can get there by car, bus, boat, plane, and until recently, train. If you don’t drive there, you can enjoy the city on foot without having to find a parking place.

The naysayers, predictably, will claim that it costs too much, that train service to Rockland is nothing more than a romantic pipe dream, subsidized by all for the enjoyment of a few. But trains, once established, have proven popular in many parts of the country. Of course trains are subsidized. So is every other form of transportation – cars, trucks, and highways most of all. I wish I didn’t have to keep pointing this out.

Most people drive because the market is rigged in favor of cars and drivers. There is money for parking lots but not train stations, road construction but not additional bus routes. Those of us who seek alternatives to owning a car face a phalanx of obstacles, not the least of which is the misguided view that public transportation is charity, or worse, welfare.

I’ve never seen this as a partisan issue, by the way. I know conservatives who love trains and liberals who love cars. Writers like trains, because you can write on them. The scenery changes every minute, and you can look at it instead of at the car in front of you. It’s a contemplative way to travel. Musicians tend to favor cars, with stereo systems and space for bulky instruments. And how else are you going to get to that Friday night gig in East Podunkville?
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But those of us who want to ride a train to Rockland (or Bangor, or Bar Harbor, in the not-too-distant future) aren’t calling for the elimination of cars (except, perhaps, in parts of Acadia National Park, but that’s another argument for another time). Opponents of alternative transportation would force us all into cars. Studies in disparate places around the U.S. and the world have shown that a mixed-use transportation system, rather than a monolithic car-centric approach, is the most functional and cost-effective.

And what’s not to love about a train? Where would country music or American cinema be without trains? They’re woven into our national DNA.

Still, some people will find reasons to oppose just about anything. There were Americans who opposed the moon landing, the greatest thing this country has ever done, because they deemed it too expensive. How could we go to the moon when kids were starving and our cities were in flames and young men were dying in Vietnam? All those concerns were valid, and yet today I’m proud to be part of a civilization that landed on the moon. My parents were proud that their taxes helped pay for it. (If you’re gullible enough to believe the conspiracy theory that all the lunar missions were faked, don’t even talk to me.)

Expanding passenger rail service in Maine, while not on the scale of reaching for the moon, is nonetheless a worthy and doable investment. I don’t expect it to happen all at once, or everywhere I want it to, but Rockland, in both the short and long term, is realistic. I’ll ride that train, and so will a lot of other people. If they build it, we will come.

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