At least stranded Europeans can look at trains as a substitute, or at least use them to fly out of unaffected airports.
A similar disaster which shuts down air traffic in NYC, DC, Chicago, Detroit, etc would be far more serious on extremely auto-dependent North American society. But unfortunately that is precisely what's needed to make politicians get serious about better rail transportation (9/11 doesn't count, this is a complete Act of God).
We have to be more auto-dependent because our country is so large. It's easy to have rail when your country is the size of Missouri or something.
No, no, no, that's not true at all. How often do you go across the country? We're auto-dependent because we go from home to work in our cars, not in trains or buses. That has nothing to do with the size of the country. Russia's far larger and has a much better rail system.
