Transportation behavior, claustrophobia, and the Supreme Court

Though Washington, DC's Union Station sits just steps from the U.S. Capitol, our country's leaders choose to prioritize cars and airlines over intercity rail (Photo courtesy of Getty Images)

Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh attacked Christine Blasey Ford’s transportation habits during her Congressional testimony yesterday.

Specifically, Kavanaugh’s supporters went after the Stanford professor’s airline trips, including her flight from the Bay Area to DC to get to the hearing, as well as other occasional air travel for work and vacations. The reason: Ford has said claustrophobia – a product of trauma from the assault – has made her afraid to fly on our country’s increasingly cramped airplanes. Their aim: to imply that because Ford flies sometimes, the claustrophobia – and, by extension, her account of the assault – are fabrications.

The flawed logic of this premise demonstrates a basic lack of understanding of how people make transportation choices. 

For any given trip – be it crosstown or cross-country – people use the transportation mode they perceive to be most convenient. This mode often is not necessarily the option a person would prefer to use if they had a balanced selection, but rather reflects what the powers that be – including the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee – have chosen to prioritize.

For example, people-oriented projects and policies have encouraged people to bike in Copenhagen and ride buses in Seoul. But cars continue to dominate Los Angeles because the region’s transportation culture was shaped over decades during which alternatives to the automobile were neglected. Despite aggressive recent transit expansion, this culture won’t change overnight.

Thus, most American intercity travel occurs on the modes for which our infrastructure was designed – cars for short-to-medium haul trips, and planes for medium-to-long haul trips. Because of the marginalization of other intercity modes, such as trains, buses, and ferries, people perceive driving or flying to be their most convenient available option even in situations when neither works well. 

For example, most travelers between Northern and Southern California choose between jammed flights that can involve long security lines and be grounded by a little fog or rain, or a nightmare car trip on I-5 through the San Joaquin Valley highlighted by breakdowns on the Grapevine grade south of Bakersfield and Harris Ranch’s smelly Coalinga feed lot that animal rights groups refer to as “Cowschwitz”. Yet because Californians have grown comfortable with and used to those two modes, public support for the state’s under-construction high speed rail project remains tepid.

Restricting ourselves to such a small set of options doesn’t just limit our transportation system’s functionality. As Dr. Ford’s fear of flying exemplifies, our existing infrastructure also fails to meet the personal needs and preferences of many people. The Interstate Highway System – the ground transportation option America chose to prioritize – would have been useless for her this week unless she was up for enduring four to five full days of driving, capped by nights at roadside Best Westerns and Motel 6s, during the buildup to her testimony.

So, while Ford may not have been thrilled about her 5 hour flight to DC – especially given the daunting task that awaited her – flying made the most sense of the options available.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Though flying will be the fastest way to cross the country for the foreseeable future, trains could be at least as useful for many purposes if our leaders decided to get serious about intercity passenger rail.

If we had a California-to-Northeast rail route that averaged 100 mph and was not subjected to the whims of freight companies like Norfolk Southern – still far less to ask for than the 200+ mph average speed Chinese riders enjoy on the 800-mile Beijing-Shanghai high speed line – the duration of coast-to-coast train trips would be trimmed from three nights to just one.

Given the spaciousness, comradery, and affordability of train travel, travelers on numerous types of trips – including individuals like Ford who are averse to flying – would finally have a viable, mainstream transportation option to embrace. Such a route would provide valuable economic connections to the communities it would serve, many of which are located in currently neglected “flyover country.”

But I haven’t heard a single Judiciary Committee senator, from either side of the aisle, advocate for such infrastructure improvements. No one even stepped up to stop Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson, formerly of Delta Air Lines, from replacing dining cars – a cherished part of intercity rail in America – with boxed meals on two major routes connecting Chicago to the Northeast.

So, on the plane Dr. Ford stays.