I’ve seen this point numerous times and it just does not make the least bit of sense to me. Which is to say, once you get to Birmingham, Alabama aboard a sleek, fast airplane, what then?

But wait. Its not to be in American. I’m American by birth. But with the stupidity here, I am out. You all can enjoy the country while it burns and keep electing people like McCain who last I heard lost this election but is still doing his best to F it up.

Counting the days to a real solution.

Speaking of dust, it’s more like dust bowl. I don’t know how this country that built the transcontinental railway in 6 yrs (during the Civil War no less), the Insterstate Highway System, and has gone to the Moon suddenly has no more ‘gas in the tank’ (pun intended) and prefers to settle for a 19th/early 20th century transportation infrastructure that will leave us as the economic backwater of the industrialized world. In fact, i could add it seems we are preferring to de-industrialize from this world.

it’s sad. really sad. this is a country that does everything patchwork and half-ass these days, underfunded, over-NIMBY’ed, and without a strategic plan, while others like China, Japan, Germany, Spain, etc…FORGE AHEAD.

I’ve never been to St. Louis, but I am so sick and tired of Portland’s light rail & streetcar system being held up as some kind of beacon of transit nirvana in this country. Rail in Portland is ridiculously slow: A highway trip from Portland Airport to downtown takes 20 minutes, at all times other than maybe 3 or 4 peak hours each day. A light-rail trip on that same route takes nearly an hour (and this is one of the system’s main lines, and not counting wait time or walk time to final destination). There are no fewer than 4 stops over a 10-block (1/2 mile) stretch in the Lloyd District - on a street mostly flanked by parking lots for local hotels & offices - so it takes about 10 minutes to go a half mile. On a RAIL line. The downtown segments, across the river from Lloyd, are even worse. The Streetcar is worst of all - operating without its own right of way, it gets stuck in traffic - what was the point of building it? The express buses Portland replaced with rail all ran faster than the trains do.

If you’re going to spend billions on rail, at least make it comparable in speed to the cars you want to lure riders away from, otherwise it will never succeed. Emulate European networks, or the East Coast workhorses (NYC, Boston, Philly subways), not these expensive toy train sets, screeching around curly-cue ramps in the West.

That $12 billion (probably an under-estimate) would be used for road bed upgrades (wood ties replaced by concrete ones, fresh gravel, etc.) and signaling improvements. The real ball-buster would be straightening some of the lines and switch / tunnel upgrades. One source of funding could be a federal fiber network laid in the ROW.

P.S. If any new track gets laid it needs to be done to a high standard. Not only should it handle 150mph trains but also be bermed (flood measure), well spaced, and include wildlife culverts (remember cow-catchers and bison herd jams). The well spaced part is needed because I believe the wake effect from true HSR would cause train-to-train suction if the traditional spacing were used.

Had that $300 billion been directed toward debt relief for mass transit agencies, electrification of commuter rail services in the 10 biggest metro areas, side-by-side with HSR construction, we would not only be in the middle of the biggest recovery of all time, we would be seriously *investing* in future productivity and quality of life for a majority of Americans. An investment of that scale, improving people’s lives and the economy, would have changed the American people’s perceptions about transit for a very very long time and garnered future political support by changing the political reality “on the ground.”

Instead, in a futile pursuit of “bipartisanship”, we got $300 billion in tax cuts, which George W. already showed us to be ineffective at stimulating anything, and not a single GOP vote in the house. As far as I am concerned, Obama and the Dems owe this country $300 billion in transit investments.

Wait, it’s going to cost $12 Billion, and we are not even going to get new rail lines? Where the H*** is that kind of money going to go then? What could cost $12 Billion except for major new construction?

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2009/06/03/coming-from-the-right-side-of-the-railroad-tracks/

The only places in the Southeast that are taking HSR seriously at the moment are Virginia and North Carolina. Both states have already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in their passenger rail programs. The VA/NC concept is to link the metro areas of Richmond, Norfolk, Raleigh, Greensboro, and Charlotte as extensions of the Northeast Corridor. Somehow these “HSR overview” reports, both yours and NPRs included, miss this.

West Texas doesn’t get a lot of attention beyond the murders in Juarez but we’re growing and already large. El Paso is set to reach 1 million people in around 2020. The metro poplulation is set to reach one million by 2013.

With our sister city across the river Juarez at 1.5 million and El Paso’s 740 000 we already make up the largest boarder community around.

To get to any city beyond El Paso requires a minimum drive of 4 hrs (Albuquerque). The nearest Texas city of San Antonio is 7 hrs and 30 minutes. Phoenix is 6hrs north west.

Everything in between is wide open desert with some small towns. I think we could see some benefit from HSR honestly. Especially since we’re at the beginnings of a large medical research community and HUGE expansion of Ft Bliss that is adding some 30 000 soldiers and their families over the next year or two.