posted
It's high time that this nation get it together, and build a nationwide high speed passenger rail track system. Unemployment is high. Similar to FDR's WPA program which reduced unemployment, and improved infrastructure, it's time to put these people to work, and get some return. This return will be in the form of efficient nationwide passenger rail service, which will reduce this country's addiction to oil.
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I agree completely. NARP has the right idea with their 40th Anniversary map (www.narprail.org)This plan would have passenger trains on routes that roughly approximate the extent of the Interstate Highway system. The time is now.
The entire system would probably not have what we know of as "high-speed rail" that exists in Europe and Asia, electrified 200-mph lines that connect major cities at intermediate distance. Those trains would be part of the system, though, along with the long-distance trains that NARP envisions. So would expanded commuter train service, and rail transit.
Major spending to expand Amtrak may be unpopular in the current political climate, but it is presented as an alternative to spending even more to keep things the way they are now. I think a lot of people would welcome the government to step in and say enough is enough.
I think it's important to realize that things do change with time. And as has been said before on this forum, even if a few new Amtrak lines get going it could really make a difference.
------------------------- "Turn off the television, turn on life"
Posts: 144 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
If we can get ONE good high speed line up and running anywhere in the country, the advantages should be so obvious that they will start being built everywhere. This is why when any serious improvement in rail service or new high speed scheme is proposed the anti-rail people come after it with everything they have.
DO NOT believe the politicians that say they are opposed to Amtrak but would really like to see better rail service. These are the guys that can "put their money (actually our money) where their mouth is," but they are not doing so. It is easy to be for something that sounds nice when you know that as things are it is not going to happen.
There are so many good rail proposals that have been planned and then died in the last several years, it is hard to believe that any of them are going to happen. Some of them, such as speeding up Chicago to St. Louis, have been so comparatively cheap it is embarrasing that they have not happened. North Carolina has done about as good as any state, but they are still working on track improvements that were supposed to have been in service two years ago, and their two proposed service expansions seem to have gotten lost in Study Limbo.
Posts: 2808 | From: Olive Branch MS | Registered: Nov 2002
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