The Annual Transportation Reckoning

Why I keep talking about this

Every summer, my wife and I travel back from Amsterdam to the US to visit family. The anxiety we feel is not about the flight itself. Instead it centers on the challenge of getting around after we land.

For years I have voiced these frustrations on X. The responses are often intense, as though pointing out the problems with car-dependent travel and the look of American roads touches a patriotic nerve. Readers mention a nice Acela trip they once took or remind me that Europe has flaws too. They are not completely wrong. Still, the strong pushback reveals something important. Many people seem to know the system could work better, yet they have learned to accept it. Highlighting these issues is not an attack on America. It is simply a way to show that genuine improvements are possible in an area that often receives too little attention. Every proud American should take notice and voice their lamentations more forcefully.

Our relatives live in the suburbs around Philadelphia and New York. On paper the distance seems reasonable. In reality, traveling between those places by public transit, especially while managing young children and luggage, proves far harder than it needs to be. The Northeast Corridor, which should be the strongest rail connection in the country, falls short of reasonable expectations.

Trains do not run reliably enough

Comfortable journeys do happen from time to time. The overall picture, however, emerges from the data. In the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor recorded 73% on-time performance, which missed the Federal Railroad Administration’s 80% minimum target. Freight interference created roughly 900,000 minutes of delay for Amtrak passengers in 2023 and more than 850,000 minutes in 2024. That adds up to well over a year and a half of total passenger waiting time.

The underlying problem might be structural

Amtrak owns only about 3% of the 21,400 route-miles its trains use. Federal rules require freight railroads to give passenger trains priority, but enforcement has remained weak for decades. The Department of Justice filed few cases over the years, although a 2025 settlement with Norfolk Southern on the Crescent route established stricter priority for Amtrak and has already delivered noticeable gains on that line. Customer satisfaction across Amtrak stays mediocre. A recent Amtrak report showed its Customer Satisfaction Index declining every year since fiscal 2022, sitting at around 78% as of June 2025. It was about 83% in fiscal 2021. The main driver was on-time performance. The on-time performance rating for Long Distance was 54%.

NJ Transit, one of the nation’s busiest commuter networks, has posted rail satisfaction scores in the 50-60% range in recent years, with some downward drift. When riders are asked what they value most, they name the fundamentals: safety, service frequency, and trains that arrive on schedule.

Europe offers a useful comparison. The EU average for high-speed and long-distance trains reaches about 87% on time, measured against a tighter 5-minute standard. Swiss Federal Railways posted ~93% punctuality in 2024, counting arrival within 3 minutes as on time. Europe certainly has difficulties of its own. Deutsche Bahn achieved only ~63% punctuality for long-distance services in the first half of 2024, and several operators fall below strong benchmarks. The real distinction lies in approach. Many European nations treat rail as vital public infrastructure and fund it accordingly. The US has too frequently viewed it as an optional add-on that must share tracks with freight.

The billboard gauntlet and visual environment

When rail options fall short, we rent a car and quickly encounter our highways. One immediate impression is the heavy presence of outdoor advertising. The US features hundreds of thousands of billboard faces. Recent counts place North American bulletin and poster faces above 400,000, with the vast majority in the US. The 1965 Highway Beautification Act sought to limit this clutter, but requirements to compensate owners and reliance on state definitions of customary use weakened its effect. Only four states, Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont, ban billboards entirely. Driving in those states often feels refreshingly open and pleasant by comparison.

Research, including work from Australia’s Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety, connects roadside digital ads to higher crash risk, sometimes by 25-29%. Many busy corridors in the US keep adding digital billboards. France and Germany, by contrast, usually forbid outdoor advertising beyond city limits. Cities such as Lyon have set ambitious goals to cut billboard numbers by 75%, reduce maximum sizes, and eliminate digital screens from public areas. Similar steps have appeared in Grenoble, Nantes, Brussels, and elsewhere. England has barred billboards in rural zones for a long time.

The guiding idea is that views from public roads hold real value and deserve protection.

Litter and basic maintenance

Roadside litter adds to the unpleasantness. Keep America Beautiful’s 2020 National Litter Study counted nearly 50 billion pieces of litter along American roadways and waterways, with about 24 billion on roads alone. Cleanup efforts cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year. Past assessments in Philadelphia have shown visible trash on a significant portion of residential blocks. Deposit-return programs demonstrate a clear alternative. Germany, for example, returns 98% of eligible containers. Norway reaches about 93%. Countries with effective systems commonly achieve collection rates above 85% and cut related litter by 40-60%. After the Netherlands expanded its deposit to smaller bottles, small-bottle litter in natural areas dropped 41% in just six months. Latvia recorded sharp falls in plastic bottles and aluminum cans along its coastline within two years of launching its scheme. Only 10 states in the US have bottle-bill laws. The EU recycles roughly 42% of its plastic packaging waste, while American plastic recycling rates sit much lower, near 5% according to some studies.

The safety picture

Beyond appearance, American highways carry higher statistical risks. The US traffic fatality rate has stayed near 12 deaths per 100,000 people in recent years, noticeably above levels in the safest Western European nations, where many register below four to five per 100,000 or under 40 to 50 per million. No state in the US fully matches the top European performers, although several come close to the EU median. Between 1991 and 2021, the US recorded smaller reductions in fatal crashes than peer developed countries tracked by the International Transport Forum, which saw median drops near 77%. Deaths among vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists increased substantially in the US over the past decade while falling across much of Europe. Factors include heavier vehicles on the road, inconsistent speed enforcement, and slower uptake of proven safety designs like roundabouts in some regions. Thankfully, early data indicate that US traffic fatalities began declining in 2024 and continued into 2025, with better rates when measured per mile driven. Good direction.

Addressing the common pushback: You would have to drive in Europe too

A frequent reply is that cars remain necessary for suburbs and rural areas everywhere, so the US is not unusual. This response overlooks the central concern. The issue is not that driving should disappear entirely. The problem is that American travel often demands a car for almost every part of a trip, offers few realistic alternatives, and makes the driving itself feel more stressful and cluttered.

In Europe, people still drive the last leg to suburbs or small towns. A dependable intercity train, however, usually covers the main distance, which shortens and eases the remaining segment by car, bus, or bike. Roads also tend to carry less visual distraction. This winter our family boarded a train in central Amsterdam and rode directly to a station in the French Alps. A hotel shuttle waited right at the platform. For the journey home we took a bus to Geneva airport. We needed no rental car. The connections simply functioned as designed. Replicating that trip from Center City Philadelphia to a ski resort in Vermont is not possible. You would drive nearly the entire way. Dutch suburbs do not all sit on rail lines either, yet the national NS network reliably links cities. From there you can bike, take a bus, or drive a short distance. Most of the US lacks this kind of layered system. But it doesn’t have to. We just have to care enough. Over time, things might change.

The corridor from Philadelphia to New York is not empty countryside. It ranks among the most densely populated strips in North America and is home to roughly 20 million people. If any route in the US merits excellent intercity transit plus strong last-mile links, this should be the one. The gap stems not from geography but from decades of policy decisions, funding choices, and land-use patterns. To be sure, American suburbs grew around the automobile in ways that many European suburbs did not. But that pattern is not an unchangeable fact of life. It can be reshaped.

Two philosophies of public space

American expansion happened alongside the rise of the car, abundant land, and a cultural fondness for the open road. European cities and rail lines mostly took shape before automobiles dominated. This background accounts for much of the difference. The Interstate system brought huge gains in mobility and economic opportunity that deserve recognition. Yet, even so, after 70 years the drawbacks of heavy reliance on cars and limited investment in other modes have become well studied. Practical examples from similar democracies already exist and deliver results. Norway’s Scenic Routes program, for instance, has devoted significant resources to thoughtful design, architecture, and scenic viewpoints along chosen highways, treating the drive itself as an experience worth improving.

The US maintains scenic byways programs on paper, but they operate at smaller scale with weaker follow-through. The common approach is to construct the road and then allow private advertising, neglect, and incremental decline, including billboards and litter, to define the roadside.

Why this matters

I am an American. My ancestors were among the first Europeans to arrive in 1620 and 1635. Multiple great+ grandfathers were Patriot soldiers in the Revolutionary War — which is why I served on the board of directors of the Sons of the Revolution in New York. If you read my writing, you know that I carry this distinction proudly. For the time being, I live in Europe with my family. We return each summer so our children can spend time with their family and learn about their country. Living in the Netherlands has quietly raised my expectations on a lot of things, this being a big one. Trains generally keep to schedule. Public spaces show signs of shared care. Infrastructure occasionally reflects pride in the collective experience.

Arriving in Philadelphia presents a contrasting picture. The rail connection between two large cities runs late far too often on tracks controlled by others. The fallback highway option brings more visual noise and measurable risk. Superior results achieved elsewhere stay out of reach not because they cannot work here, but because they have not yet become a cultural or economic priority. None of this is inevitable.

Solid research supports change. Working models from other countries are available. Recent steps, such as stronger Department of Justice oversight and falling fatality trends, prove that progress can happen. The real question is whether enough public officials and citizens will view the present shortcomings as unacceptable and the available alternatives as worth pursuing. Public space belongs to everyone. It deserves thoughtful care and steady improvement.