Ohio Needs Trains

Amtrak expansion in Ohio has me thinking I need to call a doctor about this four-hour erection.

I’ve come to the humbling realization that Ohio will be controlled by lizard Republican freaks for as long as I’m staked to this state, though that won’t stop me from wishing for an outright communist revolution.

Honestly these bums could bribe me into docile submission by legalizing sports betting and marijuana and letting the federal government build a train from Cleveland to Columbus to Cincinnati, with an auxiliary route to Dayton.

I’m not asking for the moon. Hell, I’m not even asking for a bullet train like the one in China that can send you the distance from Cleveland to Columbus in 20 minutes for $5.

Of course we could have had that train by now, except former governor John Kasich, that famous dipshit from Westerville, spit on $400 million in federal money offered by the Obama Administration to build such a technological feat that our backwater outpost couldn’t build on its own.

The Dream of the 3C Train died on that day, or so I thought, until the House of Representatives recently got off their fat asses and passed legislation that will produce results for working people albeit in a couple of years down the road.

From Jen Balduf of daytondailynews.com:

Four of Ohio’s six largest cities are key expansion areas for Amtrak as it plans how to spend its share of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.

…

Amtrak in February announced its proposal for five new routes in Ohio, pending approval of an infrastructure bill.

The routes proposed then were to connect Cincinnati with Cleveland, Indianapolis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York and several other cities.

Dayton would have an intermedia station stop connecting Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, officials said.

As part of the plan, Ohio would gradually assume operational funding responsibilities, said Stu Nicholson, executive director for the transportation advocacy group All Aboard Ohio.

Can’t wait to see how Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema use their positions of power to dilute this bill. Or, if it makes it through their miserly clutches, I can’t wait to see how our Republican government will try to sabotage a public works project that they will undoubtedly try to paint as outright communism coming to the state.

From dispatch.com in April 2021:

“This is just not the reality of how the overwhelming majority of Ohioans get around. This proposal is out-of-touch and is reflected in Amtrak’s ongoing struggle to attract both riders and revenue," Rep. Troy Balderson R-Zanesville told The Dispatch.

Congressman Balderson is either dumb or being intentionally misleading. The reason a majority of Ohioans don’t get around via train is because we’re the largest state in the country without any form of reliable passenger rail for intercity travel.

We could build a bullet train but apparently that’s too hard for the greatest country in the world. So we’ll have to settle for Amtrak expansion that will probably still be slower than driving a personal vehicle up and down I-71. We shouldn’t expect public services to have to turn a profit.

But I don’t give a shit about any of their bankrupt talking points. It could take four hours to get to Cleveland and back, and I’ll simply relax and read, write or nap. Three things that are much more productive than following laws decreed by paint on the highway surrounded by other freaks who also shouldn’t be allowed to operate heavy machinery at 25 miles per hour, let alone highway speeds.

Yes, building the railways will be expensive and time-consuming. But at some point America is going to have to get back to building infrastructure for the future as it becomes more and more evident how moronic we were to invest in gas-powered cars in the first place.

That kind of leadership won’t come from Ohio. We will have to be dragged there, kicking and screaming, by the federal government. Remember that they next time these reactionary hobgoblins try to peddle the idea that the government is the problem.

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