It has been years since I’ve been on a train, so forgive me if I wax overly enthusiastic about my encounter with public transportation today.  Although it’s more than a twenty-minute walk to the train station from my place, and it took forty minutes to Ashdod, it was an amazing joy to ride on the train and watch the highway right next to me – a literal parking lot.  “I could have been in one of those cars,” I thought, as I leaned back and plugged in my phone.  

It does no good to blame the government for its encouragement of sales of more and more automobiles.  “Where you see jams, I see overpasses” he is said to have said, and built those overpasses with the tax money from car sales.  It does no good to be happy that the policies have changed and roads are being narrowed to allow for bicycle lanes.  We still have to get from here to there, and I for one do not dare to endanger my repaired limbs in streets that intersect with bicycle lanes.  And public transportation is still in its infancy here.  We have a few years to go before the holes in our streets are filled with subways….