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12/01/2008: "Empty Highways and Shop Whistles"

Driving across town last evening, the highways seemed to be empty. At one point I felt mine was the only car on the Fort Duquesne Bridge, on the lower deck anyway. This wasn't 2 a.m., but around 7 p.m. Sure, most folks were home from work, but at any given time I'm used to considerably more cars. On the Parkway East I didn't have the usual trouble crossing three lanes to get to the Oakland exit. For sure, this is in the short run just an odd occurence, but it could be an odd occurence bolstered by the rising price of gasoline. Yesterday was the day, after-all, that oil reached a record $115-a-barrel mark. I imagined a few years or decades into the future when the strange feeling of empty highways could be more commonplace.

I grew up in a town called Altoona, which knew its share of streetcars, let alone passenger trains that kept the place alive with smoke, factories and shop whistles. Undoubtedly there was a time when the lack of the smoke and sounds brought an eerie sense. There were also likely to have been little signs along the way, not unlike the chance emty highways of yesterday.

It was Tuesday after-all that I took Amtrak from Pittsburgh to Altoona. The price of filling the tank seemed to equal or exceed the $34 price of a ticket (which could have been less had I purchased in time to take advantage of my AAA discount). Passengers who had met the train from the Capitol Limited originating in Chicago was without a vacant seat. This too could be a harbinger of things to come. If not, it gave me a chance to complete three New Yorker articles, one about the struggle of newspapers.

Eric Miller, on 12.01.08 @ 04:47PST