Krugman and the Pro-Train Push.

Anyway, my experience is that of the three modes of mechanized transport I use, trains are by far the most liberating. Planes are awful: waiting to clear security, then having to sit with your electronics turned off during takeoff and landing, no place to go if you want to get up in any case. Cars — well, even aside from traffic jams (tell me how much freedom you experience waiting for an hour in line at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel), the thing about cars is that you have to drive them, which kind of limits other stuff.*

I guess if he doesn't much care about the quality of the air he's breathing, and likes to just sit back and ride, he's good with it. If that's "freedom", no thanks.

A recent investigation conducted by Metra revealed air quality inside its passenger cars was much worse than initially publicized. The Chicago Tribune began its own probe into the air quality of the steel passenger cars owned by Metra in which Metra responded to by performing their own analysis. The Tribune, however, obtained the records and is criticizing Metra for downplaying the severity of the air quality problems inside its trains.

The records show many of the trains had high levels of soot particles, which can easily damage the respiratory system, especially the lungs. The highest average soot levels were on outbound trains leaving the south platform of Union Station in downtown Chicago. The levels of soot on these trains were, in some cases, over 100 times the level of soot particles on a typical urban street. The worst air quality and highest soot levels were found to be on trains leaving the Ogilvie Transportation Center, but outbound trains from the LaSalle Street Station were in a close second place.

The Chicago Tribune was able to obtain the records through the Freedom of Information Act and also stated the high soot levels were negatively correlated with the number of cars behind the locomotive. The first car generally had the highest soot levels and the last car generally had the lowest. Soot levels also depended on whether the train was going towards the city or suburbs. The same cars often had lower levels when traveling towards the city and higher levels when traveling towards the suburbs.

Some Metra passengers have responded to this recent news. Sheryl Liu, a daily Metra passenger said, "You can sometimes tell the air is bad because it's just heavy, like being in a dusty room. Ever since I started taking the Metra two years I've found myself getting respiratory infections more. I'm coughing a lot too, so the news about the trains having bad air isn't really a surprise."

I can't imagine things are much better in New York/New Jersey. But if you have health insurance, I guess you don't much care about the basics of life?

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* Hopefully anyways... (see Dowd's Sunday column.)