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Wheels, Walking and the Absence of Wings

May 13, 2015

Normal preparation for a distant conference or work commitment includes booking your flights. But what if you didn’t do that: What if, instead of booking a flight, you booked a berth on a train. What would happen? I decided to find out. My rule was that travel to the Congress for the New Urbanism 23 conference in Dallas, Texas from my home in Hamilton, Ontario would involve only wheels and walking, no wings. That meant a cab from my house to the GO station, walking from the GO to the Megabus station, bus to Buffalo train station, then train to dowtown Dallas and a walk to my hotel. One of the themes that you’ll find in new urbanism circles is the idea of path as place. That means that sidewalks, roads, streets, and other means of getting around are not only lines that connect where we really need to be, they are themselves places where we socialize, shop, read, watch, listen, and live out our lives. My experiment was driven by a desire to learn: what kind of place is the Amtrak pathway? It is a very different pathway than an airplane. Every mode of travel is peculiar in the space that it creates and the way that feel in that space. I am not offering an apologetic for the superiority of train travel over flying. Or bicycling. Or being shot out of a cannon. Each has its charms and irritations. Read more at seekingcommunity.ca.