The last "political" thread didn't last long, but I'm hoping this one is on a less polarizing topic.
So as some of you may know, as part of ARRA (February's stimulus act), Congress allocated $8 billion to states for inter-city rail projects. This is in addition to the $10 billion in bonds that California is issuing to start off their multi-city rail network. So clearly, high-speed rail is "gathering steam" in the US (forgive the awful, awful pun).
Today Obama announced a "strategic plan" on how ARRA's $8 billion would be budgeted; it comes to about $1b a year. All of the deets can be had
here.
My question to my fellow Americans is this: What do you think? I like trains, mainly because I hate flying, and because I think trains will make living without a car more feasible in the US (as it is in Europe). And building a rail network will obviously create a lot of jobs (possibly analogous to the first highways, back in the day?) but it will also cost a lot of money (of course! of course!).
My question to international readers is this: What do you think of your country's high-speed rail system, if you have one? Is it useful? Well-managed? Too expensive? I'm interested to know what you think.
My town (Salem, OR) is on the proposed Pacific Northwest corridor, which would (if built) be able to take me up to Portland, Seattle, and even Vancouver (my three favorite NA cities!). I can get there now, using Amtrak Cascades, but it is much slower. (Amtrak Cascades increases in popularity each year, by the way.) Things would get
really interesting if they extended the PNW corridor and/or the California corridor so that they met at a station in Oregon or NoCal...
I have a hunch high-speed rail would make even
more sense on the other side of the country (where the US's only existing high-speed rail line, Amtrak's Acela Express, lies). But this is obviously a geographically sensitive issue so I want lots of opinions
so feel free to share
