William Lind

President Dwight Eisenhower wrote his name in concrete by building the interstate highway system. President Donald Trump has made infrastructure one of his signature issues, perhaps because he too likes to write his name on big projects.

For conservatives, smart growth means recapturing good things from the past that our country has partially lost, namely traditional towns and neighborhoods as alternatives to sprawl suburbs.

The West from a Car Window is the title of one of the 19^th century books on my bookshelf. The “car” in question is a railway car, not that insubstantial quadricycle, the automobile. If you had asked a 19^th century visitor how he traveled, he would have replied not “on the train” but “on the cars.” In early January, I journeyed up the West Coast, from LA to Seattle, by train and other public transportation. Here are a few observations from that trip.