Train travel lets us be be human beings, not human doings

In the middle of another westbound Amtrak trip, I was able to take advantage of another seven-hour layover in Chicago. After taking in the well-done holiday decorations in the Great Hall, I decided to walk from Union Station to the Chicago Cultural Center, where I remember seeing engaging exhibits on previous visits. It did not disappoint. I arrived just in time for a free guided tour of the great number of temporary installations filling the two buildings (one the former main branch of the Chicago Public Library, one the former Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall) as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

The installations, the experimental designs of architects from around the world, mostly involved reimagining spaces on all scales. They ranged from thinking of small, everyday objects like string and staples as building material, to a scale model for a biological water filtration facility at the mouth of the Chicago River that would double as a park, to creating dwellings in unused parking garages, to designs that activate and enliven mundane, transitional indoor spaces like hallways and passageways.

The last theme got me thinking about the spaces we occupy while traveling in the same way as the architects and designers thought of hallways. Most hallways, like the average bus, airplane and urban train, are utilitarian affairs. They may be adorned with small embellishments, but since they aren’t treated as inhabited spaces — only as spaces that connect one inhabited room to another — they generally aren’t designed to call attention to themselves.

But one of the hallways at the Chicago Cultural Center was wrapped all the way around with a canvas on which was printed a photograph of a lush forest. This invited passers-through to linger in this space and instantly be transported somewhere completely different from downtown Chicago. An adjacent hallway, with an even higher ceiling, was filled with metal beams that curved to form triangular openings that made the space much more visually interesting, again inviting people to look up and not just to hustle through.

Train travel has the same effect on travelers as an activated hallway compared to the bland, unadorned passageway that is your average bus or plane. When occupying a vehicle out of the necessity of reaching a destination — the place the mind already is and the body would rather be — we become human doings. Trains, on the other hand, invite us to be human beings; to live the act of travel as a different kind of dwelling. The train windows invite us to immerse our sensory reciprocity with images that, however fleeting each individual scene is, serve collectively to give us a fuller understanding of the breadth of the landscape we traverse than is possible from a bus on an Interstate or a plane above the clouds. 

Of course, each traveler activates his or her own individual space on a train, by listening to music on headphones or by being immersed in a book or magazine or in a movie or game on a mobile device. The same things are done on cars, buses and planes, of course. But trains, unlike any other mode except for maritime travel, also provide room for collective place-making. Trains can serve as venues for extended conversations over meals and drinks, card games, quality time with family, and other forms of shared enjoyment with fellow travelers. 

The space on board a passenger rail car is also a good deal more malleable than that aboard a bus or plane. I doubt all the possible configurations for a rail car have been tried, but I have seen them turned into bars, nightclubs, all sorts of parlors, coffee shops, lecture halls, technology labs and artist studios. They can facilitate all sorts of group activities that can take place while in motion. 

I am convinced that restoring train travel to cultural prominence and broadening its appeal will take more than increasing speeds, adding frequencies and procuring more modern equipment — though all of these enhancements are vitally necessary. It will also take broadening awareness of the possibilities that trains offer as means of connecting — not just origins with destinations, but people with each other and with the landscape through facilitating a multitude of solo and shared on-board experiences.