My wife and I spent the past weekend at a family reunion in Connersville, Ind. Near the motel was the local rail museum, host of that weekend’s "Outing with Thomas the Tank Engine." Seeing the costumed employees of this road show reminded me of my family’s trips with my son to the rail museum in Union, Ill., to see Thomas the Tank Engine.

The highlight for any kid at these events is the opportunity to actually ride in a train car with Thomas the train pulling. The train rides out for 10 minutes and then comes back to the yard. On our last outing, we also rode in a train that was supposed to be sold to Russia in 1918. We rode the train to the edge of town and back, a round trip of 20 minutes.

And then we drove our cars home. No trains from there to here, of course. Get there from here and back. That is the whole point of transportation. What is the best way to get there from here?

Advocates of building trains like to claim that rail is the future. I’ve seen the Jetsons and the future is flying cars. George Jetson didn’t ride on a flying train.

Seriously, why would anyone believe that early 19th century technology, the rail, is the wave of the future?

If the desire is to move from an origin point to an end point, and probably return, then transportation must be focused on that goal. Putting down fixed rails and requiring passengers to move along those points (regardless of the passengers’ desire) defeats the purpose of transportation.

Tim Sheehy’s desire for some sort of rail connecting Kenosha to Milwaukee is supposedly to service 360,000 jobs within three miles of the proposed stations. Even taking Sheehy at his word, three miles is a large distance for most people to traverse by foot, especially in bad weather. Sheehy’s choo-choo train will only require still more public expenditures at every point along the rails to complete the transportation from point to point.

Sheehy also fails to mention just how many people filling those jobs live within a realistic distance of the train. Which of Sheehy’s tax-sucking ideas can we expect to get people to the trains, and then from the trains to the employers, and then back to the trains, and then back to their homes? The proposed sales tax increase in Milwaukee County? The proposed state expenditures for the KRM line? (Read: money from Waukesha taxpayers.) More hotel and rental car taxes?

How would increasing tax burdens for what will likely be bottomless pits of mass transit desires improve the living condition of taxpayers and the conditions for doing business in southeastern Wisconsin?

On the other hand, how many hundreds of thousands of jobs are within a few feet of the nearest road built for automobiles? Roads that, despite MMAC’s supposed efforts, will suffer because the governor has raided the transportation fund. Roads that we have already committed to building and maintaining. Roads that are still the most efficient way man has devised of moving people, goods and services from point to point.

MMAC should expend its energies organizing car pools and private buses rather than figuring out new ways to raise taxes.

I realize that some members of local governments were deprived as children of riding along with Thomas the train. Perhaps they could spare a weekend and get riding a train out of their systems. While they are there, they can take a look around the railroad museums at all of the dilapidated wrecks and realize that rail is the past.

You can no longer efficiently get there from here riding a train. Why should the taxpayers go for the ride?