If high speed rail is ever going to have a chance of taking root in the US, we’re going need to need a working example that makes everybody jealous.
Specifically, we’re thinking here of a world-class high speed link here in the US, that will make the media machine whir and tourists talk, that looks pretty on tv and execerbates regional rivalries. Since human beings are monkeys and all, generally the quickest way to get us to care about anything is to turn it into a status game and provoking indignation and insecurity. It would be our version of Madrid-to-Seville.
So, let’s say New York out of nowhere decides to roll big and fast-tracks a 250-mph link between NYC and Albany. State pols like Hiram Monserrate–better known as the fellow who’ll take a busted bottle to his girlfriend’s face if she displeases him–can make the journey in half an hour. Seriously: half an hour to Albany. That’s quicker than a lot of subway trips to Brooklyn. Plus, no walking around in sock feet at LaGuardia or creeping along the Major Deegan expressway. It’s a crazy-world proposition, of course, except that if China were running the US–as it someday might–that shit would already be in works. Why? It just makes sense.
Across the rest of the country, this link would serve as both a model and a gauntlet thrown down. In Texas, state legislators might see the quick, easy and civilized trip Hiram was taking to work and say, “Damn, maybe we should think seriously about getting this T-Bone thing built sometime this century.” And so on.
It could happen! Maybe. Ever since we saw Jay Yarrow make an argument along these lines over at Business Insider–giving all the stimulus money to California’s HSR project, to create a national model–we’ve been noodling about the possibilities.
But our problem with Jay’s case is that California is such a massive project that by the time it’s built out enough to convince anybody of anything, another decade or more will have passed. We need something of more modest scope, and we need it now. Ideally, of course, this would be Washington DC-to-New York. But given all the chefs that would have to be involved in cooking that stew, we’re not optimistic on that front (short of the magical emergence of a Robert Moses-style “infrastructure czar” emerges who can just punch it through).
But it’s looking more and more like Florida might be the answer. From today’s Tampa Tribune:
As key political factors fall in place, Tampa, Lakeland and Orlando are leading contenders to launch the nation’s first true high-speed rail corridor, with 150 mph trains running by 2014.
Of course, this is contingent on getting $2.5 billion in federal funds from the stimulus sweepstakes. But there’s plenty of reason to think that might happen. The state owns the right of way, and the project is essentially designed and shovel-ready. The link would also be meaningful first step toward a larger system–targeted for 2017 completion–connecting Tampa and Orlando to Miami (and Jacksonville, via Amtrak.) 
Now, this sounds almost perfect — so naturally there’s a problem. In this case, it’s that the train to Orlando doesn’t actually go to Orlando. It goes to the airport. Now, Orlando has a very busy airport so this proposed route would certainly be of interest to many Floridians and tourists. But this also means it’s a glorified airport shuttle rather than a real intercity rail link, of the sort that civilized people elsewhere in the would want and demand.
At The Transport Politic, Yonah offers a fine suggestion: “In Orlando, trains could continue up I-4 into downtown after the Convention Center stop, and then head back towards the airport, from which trains south to Miami would eventually extend.
The downside of that routing change would be slowing the project down and interfering with this whole “showpiece” business. The upside would be, you know, doing it right. Jeez, Marsha, why does everything always have to be so complicated!
A few months ago, when the financial markets were still in freefall, we looked at 
The neat infographic show how this yet-to-be-built Friendship Bridge matches up against other long bridges around the world. (Spoiler alert: It beats them all.)
Of course, in the US there is just deafening silence. GOP senator Lamar Alexander has been pushing for 
David Byrne–that intense, herky-jerky fellow who sang “Burning Down The House” and various other songs you know from the 80s–says it used to be considered very uncool to ride a bike in New York. It certainly was at the time when, as a budding young pop icon in the early Reagan years, he adopted his childhood bike as “a principle means of transportation” around the Big Apple.
So what would a sustainable world look like? We’d be in pretty good shape if we all lived 
The fundamental virtue of a city is that it’s a place where connections happen — social, commercial, logistical, and so on. We could all live Unabomber lives in isolated shacks and humanity would carry on, but that would be an impoverishing choice. Especially if we were all sending each other explosives.
