The lost golden age of travel

John Merli
Published: April 24, 2008

Remember when traveling used to be fun? Sort of fun anyway? It was probably never really a barrel of laughs (except maybe on those redeye flights out of Las Vegas), but hardly was it the most frustrating thing to do, either. Like it is now. For those why fly, the only thing worse than airlines these days is maybe listening to people pass on all their airline war stories of late and cancelled flights — yarns which, ironically, are often dished out while experiencing another delayed or cancelled flight.

To ask anyone these days if they like to travel is like asking them how their General Electric stock is doing. Especially if you had the bad luck to have booked a flight on American Airlines, which cancelled more than 3,000 of its flights recently. And did we mention that new megaterminal at Heathrow Airport in London managed to somehow misplace tens of thousands of bags in their first two weeks of operation? No matter where you were coming from, day or night, they managed to lose your bags (which at least says something for British consistency, albeit of the negative kind).

Flying is hardly the only culprit here in the spring of our discontent. As any commuter in Prince William and vicinity can attest, driving has also seen better days. Judging from traffic photos posted on this newspaper’s Web site in recent weeks, it’s not been a good month for driving on I-95 in the early afternoon before rush hour, which supposedly happens on virtually any day of the week. And it’s not like gas is any bargain at the pump right now, either.

As for trains, which are now almost as expensive as planes for those popular cities where they do go (and there aren’t many towns where they don’t anymore), it might be the way to go with the least amount of hassle — but only if time is not of any real importance. (And when was the last time anyone would admit to that?) That’s a shame, because in Europe and some other parts of the world, they take their trains seriously, which is why they have “bullet trains” that are clean, fast and usually run on time. Like most trains, you sit where you want and you take all your bags with you when you arrive.

You can argue day and night about the pros and cons of ethanol (growing food for fuel is a rather new concept in the U.S., and probably not a good precedent to set for a variety of reasons, but I digress), and toll lanes and putting more funds into Amtrak and public transportation of all kinds, but the fact of the matter is that travel of any kind should be a mostly enjoyable adventure. It is, after all, what most adventures used to be all about.

When travel of any and all kinds becomes drudgery — something that makes most people roll their eyes in anxious anticipation — it signals that there’s nothing short of a massive breakdown in the way we handle some of our most basic needs as a society. (Where’s all that “superpower” when you need it?) No wonder more than 80 percent of Americans in a recent poll think the nation is heading in the wrong direction. I suspect it’s not only Iraq, the housing market and the economy that’s pulling a lot of people down; things that we used to take for granted, such as the ability to get from here to there with a minimum amount of hardship, now require a whole lot of what many of us don’t have these days: infinite patience and a bigger pocketbook.

Some things in life should be at least partly enjoyable — and flying, driving and taking the train used to be among them. They still can be, on rare occasion, but it’s usually the exception to the rule. In
Northern Virginia. The concept of travel is especially tested and only gets worse as every vacant patch of land is eaten up with new townhouses and strip malls that further choke our crowded roads without anything approaching a grand and sensible plan.

You may have noticed that few people actually spend their retirement here.

Can we blame them? Apparently their travel plans were simple: one-way and out of town.

John Merli has been a Prince William County resident since 1984, and a Potomac News columnist since 1985. He has worked in the media for more than 30 years. E-mail him at
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