As I stood on the sleet-covered train platform in Wilmington, Del. three weeks ago, waiting for my train up to Boston to take me back to Brandeis at the end of winter break, I couldn't help but become a bit angry. My anger was not due to the delay-an hour's delay to my arrival back at school after a month away was not tragic-but because I didn't know where the exorbitant amount of money I paid for my train tickets was going.

If my train tickets didn't even guarantee that my train would be on time or that I would have a warm station in which to wait in the case of a delay, then where did my $187 go?

Paying for absurdly priced travel is simply a side effect of the priceless opportunity to go to college at an institution far away from home.

If a student does not live near any university, wants to study a specific subject not offered near her, chooses to pursue an ambitious goal of applying to her "dream school" or simply wants a change of scenery, a college in a far-off land (or state) will likely provide the experience which she seeks.

However, going to college far from home also means paying to get there and back each time you decide to travel between the two.

Additionally, on my $187 train trip, more seats were empty than full. Perhaps the reason was high prices, but in the time that it takes my train to use its set amount of fuel to get me and my fellow passengers up to Boston, thousands of people are driving in their cars, burning the gas in their own tanks en route to the same destination.

If there are empty seats on the train, they may as well be set at a price reasonable enough for someone to want to actually fill them.

In Obama's State of the Union address, he emphasized that in the near future, the country that will lead the world will be not the most powerful country but the most "green."

If America is truly making an effort to "go green," it certainly is not evident upon looking at the prices of public transportation these days.

In the United States, to take a train from New York City to Boston on the regular Northeast Regional line (a trip with a duration of approximately 3 hours, 31 minutes) costs $107.

However, in Israel, to take a train from Be'er Sheva to Akko (a trip with a duration of approximately 3 hours, 13 minutes) costs only 57 shekels, or roughly $16. Furthermore, this price for the 3-hour Israeli train ride is a student price, discounted from the adult price of 63.5 shekels ($17).

Compare this to Amtrak's "Student Advantage" system: Upon paying $50 for four years, subscribers save 10 percent on Amtrak train trips. All this means is instead of paying $138 for a round-trip ticket from Washington to New York, students will pay $117.30.

This is just not a substantial amount of savings for a college student. There are also sites such as studentuniverse.com where finding cheaper flights is very hit or miss.

But affordable student travel should be a rule rather than the exception to the rule, and it should be easy to find. Cheap travel should be readily available to already busy students.

Clearly, something is wrong with America's public transportation system.

It would be in the best interest of college students, the economy and the environment for the government to subsidize forms of public transportation for university students.

College students often cannot have cars on campus and rely on public transportation for four years, so the students could provide steady business for these industries.

Unfortunately, college students are often too busy with classes and extracurricular commitments to hold down a stable or lucrative job, and thus what little money they manage to compile should not be exploited to fuel the economy.

It could even be beneficial for home states to subsidize travel to and from school for college students.

Say for example, a high school student from Wyoming decided to specialize in nanotechnology, and the only schools with programs that matched his interests were on the East Coast.

The state could offer to pay for his travel expenses to school and back in exchange for the promise that after college, the student would devote a set number of years to living and working in Wyoming, hopefully bringing increased industry to the area, thus benefitting the state.

Ultimately, college students who choose to study far from home will be dependent upon public transportation regardless of its price.

If America has a future in "going green," the simplest tracks to lay are the ones that have already been laid.