by Gilbert B Norman
In a solid editorial published this past Saturday, The New York Times is heartily on board:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/opinion/01sat3.html
Brief passage:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/opinion/01sat3.html
Brief passage:
- President Obama noted the other day that high-speed rail is not some pie-in-the-sky idea. “It’s happening now,” he said. “The problem is that it is happening elsewhere.” Japan, Spain, China and Germany are among those with superspeedy trains that rival air travel and easily eclipse the irritations of a car trip. Yet America has only one high-speed corridor, from Boston to Washington, where the Acela Express is often forced by conditions to slow down to average speeds of around 70 miles per hour.
Europe’s bullet trains can run at an average of about 130 m.p.h., and Japan’s zip through the countryside at an average of 180 m.p.h. One difference, of course, is that governments overseas have put big money behind these forms of transit. Spain, for example, plans to invest about $140 billion over the next decade to develop a network of 6,200 miles of high-speed rail lines.
Mr. Obama made certain that he had some money in his first stimulus package for high-speed rail, but it was only about $8 billion for the entire country. The House appeared ready to help, authorizing another $4 billion, but the Senate recently decided to pare that amount down to a paltry $1.2 billion. Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, who know how much railroads relieve congestion and pollution, should turn their colleagues around.
