I imagine that this is something encountered during most trips via passenger rail through urbanized parts of the country, at least in the Northeast and the Midwest. I've taken the train from Buffalo to New York City, and the post-industrial landscape of upstate New York often seemed like something out of The Road. And not just the large cities like Rochester and Syracuse, either; in fact, the worst-off places were small factory towns like Little Falls and Canajoharie. It's amazing that while a significant portion of our country looks like this, many of us can go through most of our lives without ever seeing it in person.
The rail corridors from Chicago to either Albany or to DC (both through Cleveland) are both similar to the landscape described in the article. The main difference compared to the corridor in the article is that there are longer stretches of open rural land between the industrial towns.
