The Choo-Choo Diaries: A ‘Salon In Motion’ On The California Zephyr

If you can urgently discuss population pressures and the wastefulness of low-density sprawl while riding through the moonscaped great basin of Utah and the primitive canyons of Colorado, you must really mean it.

Such was the scenic dialogue aboard the eastbound California Zephyr train that arrived last night in Denver. The seventeenth annual Congress for the New Urbanism will convene here today, but about a dozen affiliated architects, planners and developers from California decided to jump-start the conference with a two-day “salon-in-motion.” It kicked off Monday morning with a departure from the San Francisco bay area, where I smuggled myself aboard their two chartered railcars, a vintage stainless steel dome-top lounge and a matching sleeper. They were pulled behind the regular Amtrak Superliners at a cost (to the private charter operator) of $3.70 per mile.

The conversation, like the topography, was wide-ranging and occasionally grandiose. Despite the retro conveyance, the men (they were all men, except for one wife, a graphic designer) focused their energies on the current economic upheaval, new environmental goals, and what kind of future these factors—and they themselves—might conspire to create.

Monday afternoon, as the train climbed the Sierra Nevada mountains, talk turned to the future of commercial real estate, and how it seems to be following housing off the value boom cliff. A consensus was reached: that small would be the new big. Developer Robert Davis, who one could say lit the fuse on New Urbanism almost thirty years ago as the developer of Seaside, Florida, mentioned that their plans for larger retail on the square of Seaside were bring amended. The residents prefer the small, shabbier buildings there now, and so the town elders have decided instead to allow small vendors in airstream trailers to gather picturesquely downtown.

John Anderson, of Anderson and Kim in Chico, California, argued that the future will indeed be downsized—the farmer’s market and swap meet models would see a resurgence, along with small grocery stores like the IGAs of old. A remarkable thing to hear from Anderson, who has spent over a decade building to more traditional neighborhood scale as penance for his long-ago (pre-enlightenment, he would say) work building the Mall of America.

Anderson’s conversion story is not uncommon among new urbanists, many of whom regret the suburban atrocities of their early careers. After Monday’s lunch (a “Grilled Elmo” with ham, turkey, munster, cranberry and green apple), cocktails were served and the group swapped stories of mind-blowing encounters with some of the New Urbanism’s intellectual leaders. The names that came up repeatedly: Andres Duany, a blunt and articulate town planner with a heart of gold who tells it like it is, and Leon Krier, the uncompromising anti-modernist visionary who’s largely responsible for Duany’s epiphany in these matters.

Lind

Monday night we were joined by William Lind, of the Free Congress Foundation, whose arrival onboard constituted a sharp jump in both conservativism and classiness. Mr. Lind is perhaps the leading conservative proponent of urban and intercity rail. With the late Paul Weyrich, he wrote a compelling book, recently published by Free Congress and Reconnecting America, called “Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation.” Lind also likes to smoke a pipe after dinner. Such pleasures are not normally available on Amtrak, but these old chartered cars still have a vestibule between them, with dutch doors that open to the fresh air. Mr. Lind regaled us with his experiences riding this very route in the 1970s, before Amtrak was born, and another trip he took on the Orient Express to Venice. He also railed (pun intended) against modern technology. “There are two man-made inventions that, if they were alive, would go to heaven or hell,” he said. “The computer would go to hell. The steam engine would go to heaven.” Lind will argue that restoring America’s rail capabilities is a national security priority—freedom from foreign oil, etc.—but he clearly has aesthetic reasons too.

Being from California, many aboard were eager to figure out how to make hay of new state legislation requiring community land use plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Could the New Urbanists leap into the policy gap and offer basic models for communities to adopt? That was the mission Tuesday afternoon, but the conversation devolved quickly into larger questions. Can suburbs that depend on driving really be retrofitted to allow meaningful walking and biking opportunities? Howard Blackson, a planner with Placemakers in San Diego, thought this was a difficult proposition. “You can go towards T1,” he said, citing the urban transect code for wilderness, “but it’s too hard to go toward T6,” or urban core.

Martin Dreiling, an architect from Burlingame, California, answered with a bit of poetic philosophy. “I think of human settlement as being similar to how stars are made.” We are dust. There is gravity. And “it all gets pulled together in these places where there’s energy,” like train stops or waterfronts. “But the reason you’ve had suburban sprawl is that cheap driving warped that whole equation. Once you have correctly priced oil, I think that traditional urban places will find a way to happen again.”

All semblance of agenda was dropped as we entered the dramatic Rocky mountains. Thanks to Mr. Lind, we rode through the six-mile Moffet tunnel drinking Brandy Alexanders, or as close as we could get (crème de cacao was replaced with Baileys). Lind explained that it was the drink of choice of rail fans, because it was the favorite of E. M. Frimbo, who wrote about trains for The New Yorker magazine. In the distance the skyline of Denver soon appeared, and we rode slowly toward it along switchbacks down the mountain. Dinner was beef tenderloin. The red neon sign on Union Station preached to the converted. “Welcome to Denver,” it said. “Travel by Train.”

Matt Dellinger writes about transportation and urban planning. He has contributed articles to The New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times, Oxford American and Smithsonian and is a regular guest on WNYC’s The Takeaway. He is currently at work on a book about Interstate 69. It will be published by Scribner in summer 2010.