America as a nation is currently experiencing a lot of difficulties at home for a number of reasons, and though it is easy to point them out and talk about them, you seldom, if ever, see people actually coming up with solutions to solve them. One such problem is public transportation, which is basically nothing but a laughably tragic joke in the United States, unless you are lucky enough to live in a big city where some semblance of public transport can thankfully still be found.

Anywhere outside of a few select places, not having a car or the ability to pay for a taxi is a curse that cages people to a restricted and limited life. And whereas Europe, China and many other places around the world embrace the ideas of urbanism and public transport, America is only stagnating by wasting money on wider highways and bigger cars that are a danger to both the environment — due to the amount of land that is being wasted to build them — and to us the people — due to how dangerously big cars have gotten in the past few years alone. We must put an end to 10 mile-long highways and tank-sized pickup trucks. We must end the cruel culture of car dependency in this country and revive urbanism in America. And the way to do that might just be hidden in what we already used to have before.

Binghamton is historically not a stranger to passenger railways at all. In fact, Broome County used to have what could at the very least be described as a “decent” level of connection to the rest of the country by rail during the days when the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad station was still active in Downtown Binghamton.

For many decades between 1901 and 1970, when railways still played a large part in American public transport, the people of Broome County could enjoy the opportunity of being able to travel anywhere from Buffalo to New York or Philadelphia to Chicago and any other corner in the rest of the country through further connections at those places as well with ease. Since its closure more than 50 years ago, however, that terminal has only been sitting idly and gathering dust, whereas now people can only hope to travel to any place outside the county by either having a car or buying a bus ticket, both of which are vastly inferior and inefficient methods of travel compared to the benefits of passenger railways.

The same could be said for municipal transport within the county as well. Though not as crowded as the other big cities like Boston or San Francisco, Binghamton and the cities surrounding it still have a large enough combined population that investing in methods of public transport such as light rail and trams would make more sense compared to just having more bus routes. Passenger rail is statistically more reliable, friendlier to the environment and overall a more efficient method of transportation compared to buses and especially to automobiles.

Being dependent on cars is something that people in other developed countries around the world do not even need to consider in this day and age, and it does not take living in a giant metropolis for people to enjoy the benefits of rail transportation either. People living in small towns and villages can and do enjoy public rail transport just as easily and efficiently as people who live in cities with enormous networks like Moscow or Istanbul. Binghamton and, to a wider extent, the United States can take an example from what other nations can achieve and aspire to achieve in terms of economic and social development by relying on urbanist policies rather than car-dependent infrastructure. A new perspective on ways to develop this city can bring many benefits in the long run too.

Having connections via rail to cities such as Syracuse, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and so many other cities across the entire nation can bring surplus revenue from tourism, revive the industrial spirit of this region by connecting it to other hubs of production and commerce and increase the living standards of the residents of this county by allowing them to access more job opportunities through a municipal network of light railway lines by following the examples of European nations.

Car dependency is nothing but a strain on the back of this nation that restricts it from reaching its true economic potential, especially in a time when old ideas and principles are in such need of being replaced with new ones for the betterment of the country as a whole. Binghamton and Broome County, as a collective, can prove this to the entire country by embracing the values of urbanism and reviving its historical railways by investing in new public transport and railway infrastructure projects. It would only be a matter of time before this region would begin to enjoy the fruits of such a concerted effort, and I am truly convinced that the future of this region, as well as America as a whole, lies in the opportunity of having more railways.

Deniz Gulay is a freshman majoring in history.