John Henry came in second to the steam drill. Garry Kasparov lost to Deep Blue. Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t stop Skynet.
Thanks to the relentless advance of technology, man continues to lose to machine. Until now.
From the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., challenged the D.C. Streetcar to a race.
Well, almost.
“I’ve walked, and I can out-walk it,” Paul bragged during a speech decrying federal spending on the transportation boondoggle. “We’ve actually thought about filming me in a race with the streetcar to see who wins: me walking or it driving.”
The streetcar runs from behind Union Station for a mile down the city’s northeast H-Street corridor. No one really rides it, and almost everyone hates it because it is as slow as it is expensive. Without counting maintenance costs, the streetcar that travels at walking speed cost $200 million to build and loses $8 million annually to run just 2.2 miles.
Most of that money came from the city and at least $1.6 million of it from the federal government. None of the funding has come from passengers. It currently operates fare-free for anyone with the patience or the ignorance needed to stumble aboard.
Inefficiency and that expense has inspired city residents to race the streetcar. Michael Laris of the Washington Post beat it from start to finish on foot. A local running club does wind sprints against the machine. And literally anyone on a bicycle, an Uber, or a bus has probably overtaken the lumbering people mover.
That should give Paul confidence. At 55 years old, the senator seems quite fit. And as he points out, the streetcar isn’t cutting-edge technology.
“Going back to some technology from hundreds of years ago that still requires wires to be running down the street,” Paul said, “is really not a useful expense of government money, and D.C. gets a lot of federal money.” He is right, and that’s why he should race it.
