No city can thrive or even survive without these Great Connectors. Indeed, no true city has surfaced anywhere in America since the Auto Age began to dismantle the nation’s streetcars and urban cores.

Rail could reverse that. Rail is the linchpin that allows for urban proximity. It is the environmental panacea that sustains our lives and landscapes and promotes walkability, stopping the spread that destroys l.2 million acres of farmland and 60,000 acres of wetland per year. Without civilized rail, we are stuck in traffic, circling in terminals, and breathing bad air.

Unfortunately, the brake is being applied to all this energy. A report this month by the pro-highway, pro-privatizing Amtrak Reform Council — a federal study commission — calls for dismantling the so-called "money-losing" system. That dispersal would deprive hundreds of cities and hundreds of thousands of passengers from being served by trains.

The council’s biased rendering was anticipated. But it comes at a bad time. Despite the fact that Amtrak has affected a resurgence in rail, a five-year-old federal law dictates that it has only until next December to make itself solvent or disband — a state of financial balance demanded of no other government or transportation agency.

That bottomline bromide is a misreading of both linguistics and politics. "Money-losing" is the prefix applied to rail, struggling to survive on the government’s paltry $520 million annual appropriation. No such financial epithet applies to petrol-swilling, road-based forms of mobility — planes, cars, and trucks — which secure $46 billion dollars yearly from the federal trough and consume 60 percent of the nearly 20 million barrels of oil that Americans use every day.

To be sure, creative thinking doesn’t always come easy to the U.S. rail operator, whose lines have grown weedy with neglect. Amtrak’s service and promptness are mixed, its coffers low. Still, the east coast’s "quiet car," a divine zone that silences cell phones; plus fresh air and stretching room throughout make the space for "getting there" fit for human habitation.

To be sure, too, the lack of tracks to carry more people as well as goods creates problems. "Amtrak trains are tenants of freight railroads that probably aren’t compensated nearly enough for hosting them, and that they have little control over," complains William Vantuano, editor of Passenger Rail, the industry trade publication.

Despite such criticism, Amtrak is not yet dead. Even as the nation’s passenger rail begins to cut staffers to meet its fiscal obligations, the trend has turned. "The best-kept secret is that Amtrak is making money," said Michael Dukakis, acting chairman of its board, noting the $l80 million profit on the Acela line. In fact, even President Bush provided room for intercity passenger trains in his February budget proposal.

The states, too, have begun to step in where Washington wimps out. Local governments are mindful of high-speed rail’s swelling ridership in Chicago and the far west, and Acela’s success in the east, with a new rail spur from Boston to Maine. They see scrubbed-up terminals across the country and the forthcoming showpiece in a new Penn Station in New York.

In fact, most of us mere mortals are far ahead of the Washington mindset. As long waits and fear of flying combine with the logic of rail, awareness grows. With half the trips from airports a mere 400 to 500 miles — and a quarter under 200 miles — an easy rail trip could replace many of the scary air shuttles.

In light of September 11, the time has come to rethink the Third World status of U.S. trains. In l902, our newly-industrialized nation laid 6,000 miles of track across the continent to link its citizenry. A century later, we should measure up to those ancestors — if not Thoreau, then the everyday heroes who hammered out a united nation.

Jane Holtz Kay, the architecture/planning critic for the Nation and the author of "Asphalt Nation," and "Lost Boston," is currently working on "Last Chance Landscape." Reach her at JHoltzKay@aol.com.

The pictures that accompany this article are part of an exhibition, "Modern Trains and Splendid Stations: Architecture and Design for the 21st Century," that is on view at The Art Institute of Chicago through July 28, 2002.

The images in Ms. Kay's piece are just 2 of the more than 45 rail projects featured in the exhibition.