When Cars Were Not the Only Future

Cars define mobility. They are the only tool we know, the presumed answer in nearly every case. We routinely face distances of ten, fifty, a hundred miles, it's a way of life that seems to demand cars. 

And it's not just the practicalities. Cars are a unique and personal symbol of freedom from the tyranny of distance. We are willing to sacrifice almost anything to keep our cars and in truth that's exactly what we must do. 

But that's just the way it is. Cars were necessary because historically No other reality could have come up in place of the one we know.

Or could it? 

Was there another way? 

Was there another option available at the moment when people needed to get off the farm and go to work in factories? Was there some other option on hand to connect a growing middle class with the consumer goods and opportunities that would drive the nation's growth?

There was.

If you look around the relics are still there today. Relics of a future that seemed likely a long time ago, which many level headed and intelligent individuals envisioned and invested in and which did have its day.

Electric rail once crisscrossed much of the united states, in states like Ohio, Texas, California and Indiana to name only a few. Independent companies laid track connecting to other lines of rail and by this means resident of rural outlying areas had ready access to nearly their entire state for the price of a round trip ticket and a day's ride.

Most of the remnants of this Electric Interurban system are decrepit and obscure when they are visible at all. Small stone pavilions where riders could shelter while waiting for the electric rail car, boarded up old station houses that are no longer adjoined by any rail, active or otherwise, large brick buildings long since converted into manufacturing space but which once housed the cars between service days. 

The remnants of this past future, which vanished long before the actual future ever arrived, are a reminder that no future is entirely certain. There are alternatives. And even now, if we look to the past, there are perhaps different futures yet to uncovered.