TYes, this smacks of a positive policy pathway that the likes of Rove, Wehner and Gerson no doubt will find polarizing! Let's watch and listen for their polemics of protest, pleasantly (with popcorn in hand)! -Kevo

And I want basic rail service to extend further north in the northeast. You can get to Portland, Maine on Amtrak, but not beyond. There used to be far more extensive rail in Maine, but alas, those days are gone.

Now if they can just boost the use of our existing rail to move more cargo, we'd see a real benefit in terms of less crowded highways, less truck emissions, and less infrastructure cost in repairing those highways.

Texans should be outraged by this gesture coming from the "oppressive hand of government".

Well good luck with that . We've got a bunch of NIMBY's here in Florida trying to kill a commuter rail proposal because to many freight trains might go through their cities...boo hoo. I can see the fights that would ensue if they had to contend with a fast choo-choo.

Orlando Sentinel
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-asecsunrail16041609apr16,0,1283239.story

Why would the Senators from all those empty square states in the middle ever allow this to happen? Our Constitutional system prohibits doing anything on a national scale that primarily benefits citizens.

Maybe we could promise to build all the trains and other equipment in their states...

But I don't see any little red lines going to the Bunny Ranch?

So is there anything that is not being proposed for jobs creation? I get the sense of a thousand trial ballons going up, but not much focus on a real plan.

There was gonna be high speed rail, and nextgen internet, and the smart electrical transmission network, and e-records for health care, and clean electrical generation...etc., etc.,.... Just where is the focus in all of this? Or is it all diversion??????

"There was gonna be high speed rail, and nextgen internet, and the smart electrical transmission network, and e-records for health care, and clean electrical generation...etc., etc.,....Just where is the focus in all of this? Or is it all diversion??????"

It's called multi-tasking. After 8 years, it's refreshing isn't it?

The existing Interstate Highway System would make a great right-of-way for building passenger and/or freight rail all over the country. The interstate highways are already located pretty much where the high-volume intercity traffic is.

Yeah, but where's that high-speed special from Disneyland to the Mustang Ranch?

How come there's all that rail in the Southeast? The RePukelicans don't like the idea and that's GOP country!

Connect California to Seattle, and forget South Carolina altogether.

I just can't understand why all this federal money keeps flowing to the Deep South.

I seriously hope that map is accurate about where they intend to put the system lines for the Twin Cities rail network, because my town and one to our north (both around 80k population) have been fighting it out and petitioning the gov't for this very eventuality. Whichever town doesn't get the line will likely suffer economically the same way competing towns did during the highway/interstate boom. From the looks of that map we're the expected choice... hope it's right.

Dustin, I'm in the Twin Cities too, but I'm more excited about the possibility of HSR between here and Milwaukee and then Chicago than I am worried about more local considerations such as 'who gets what'--at least initially. Keep in mind that the main artery can be connected to at a later date, and just because this initial outlay may or may not be placed on the line now doesn't mean that it cannot be in the future. There will always be issues such as the one you mention, but at this point we as a nation have to consider the foundation first. Certainly, some towns and cities will be hurt, but we'll all be better for this. If it happens.

Well, this will certainly make it easier to transport everyone to their designated FEMA camps!

Between Tucson and Phoenix please

Not only is it needed, but it will might get our two chumps $enators on board too...

it would be like a dream come true.

an interstate highway for the 21st century.

hooray!

Our friends on the right will hopefully note that the plan does not include a link between L.A. and Vegas.

Gosh, what we could do if the rail were owned by the feds like the freeways, and the trains didn't have to crawl?

I could go to my mum's... 800 miles away, eleven hours by car, currently nineteen hours by rail, and five hours (with airport security) by airline. It costs twice as much to travel by rail as by air with the same exact amenities - unreserved seating, no sleep space, etc; while by car costs as much as air (Vehicle, mileage, and maintenance, not fuel being the main costs) but I get four seats plus luggage space instead of one.

And which one actually costs less to operate, per passenger mile? Rail, of course.

*sigh*

"Certainly, some towns and cities will be hurt, but we'll all be better for this."

That's what they said about NAFTA too; it's not exactly comforting considerations when you're hometown is one of the ones hurt. The big picture's always important, but the idea that people should set their local considerations aside when determining the merits of a system isn't a realistic expectation.

$8B is the what we already pay every 3 weeks in Iraq - given recent estimates of 10-12B/month are still accurate. Perhaps we can we suspend blowing shit up for 3 weeks?

The major cost of building a true high speed rail line in the Northeast corridor (which is probably the only part of the US with the population density to support high speed rail) would be to acquire the right-of-way, since the existing line is not straight enough. In other words, we'd be spending tens of billions of dollars to buy (through a long, drawn out eminent domain process) land. Maybe that would provide some economic "stimulus," I don't know, I'm not an economist, but color me skeptical.

How long will it take for some wingnut to take a ruler to the map and declare that the rail lines will be ten miles wide destroying cities and towns along it's path? And also to have Fox Nutwork spread it around?

wbn - what are you talking about? The right of way for rail lines is, I believe, less than a hundred yards. Or are you thinking about something else?

"There was gonna be high speed rail, and nextgen internet, and the smart electrical transmission network, and e-records for health care, and clean electrical generation...etc., etc.,....Just where is the focus in all of this? Or is it all diversion??????"

It's called multi-tasking. After 8 years, it's refreshing isn't it?

oh my, is IS refreshing. What is it with the "he's doing too much crowd"? Don't they realize he's not personally doing all these things? That's the advantage of hiring/appointing competent people instead of cronies. You can let them do the jobs they were hired to do.

"wbn - what are you talking about? The right of way for rail lines is, I believe, less than a hundred yards. Or are you thinking about something else?"

On the map the lines used to show the rails aren't to scale.

DBL - I was trying to be sarcastic. Remember the trade corridor that was supposed to be built between Canada and Mexico?

Some wingnut literally took a ruler to a non-scaled map that had the route marked with a Hi-liter pen and declared that the "Highway" was ten lanes wide in each direction and the conspiracy theorists took off and ran with it. If you look around on the web there are sites that will explain in all their warped glory.

"Also, opportunities exist for the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston to compete for funds to improve the nation's only existing high-speed rail service."

It's about 220 miles from NYC to DC. The "high-speed" Acela covers that distance in 2 hours 45 minutes, IIRC. That's about 82 mph.

That's "high-speed" rail by the standards of 1909, maybe. But when other countries have 200-mph trains burning up the rails, that's not high-speed; that's bullshit.

why is the intrustive hand of the federal goverment drawing any lines at all in texas?
not a single fucking dime for governor goodhair!

So I have a basic question about high speed rail - how frequent are the stops? I am looking at that map, and am excited to see my small city of Columbia, Missouri on a line (woo hoo!), but would a train stop here or just move on through?

JB makes a critical point. The high speed networks in Europe and Japan are high speed because they have stops only in major cities ("markets"). US politics won't allow that, instead there will be stops at every hamlet and dog house in every congressional district. Trains with a cruising speed of 200 mph will average about 50.

If the white dots represent HSR stations, it appears that Mississippi is the only state through which HSR lines would pass, but never stop. Just an observation.