Obama unveils high-speed passenger rail plan
CNN story on President Obama unveiling his administration's blueprint for a new national network of high-speed passenger rail lines. Obama says such an investment is necessary to reduce traffic congestion, cut dependence on foreign oil and improve the environment. Highlights from the article:
- The president's plan identifies 10 potential high-speed intercity corridors for federal funding, including California, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York and New England.
- Highlights potential improvements in the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor running from Washington to Boston, Massachusetts.
- Each of the corridors identified by the president's report are between 100 and 600 miles long. The blueprint envisions some trains traveling at top speeds of over 150 mph.
- The administration has dedicated $1.3 billion in federal funding for Amtrak. The money for the rail service, which carried almost 29 million passengers last year, will go primarily to infrastructure repair and improvement.
posted by Guy in NYC at
Obama unveils high-speed passenger rail plan - 3:52 PM
2 Comments:
They have talked this to death in Illinois from Chicago to St. Louis. It would cut 1 hour off the train trip. They never mention that all the stops are still going to happen. 4 hours by train or 5 hours by car. You would probably get to where you are going faster by car. Now Chicago to Denver with only a couple stops each in Iowa and Nebraska may be worth looking into
By
Unknown, at 6:56 PM, April 16, 2009
Any high speed line needs to be smartly done and worth the economic investment. It's about 300 miles between Chi and StL so it'd be worth having a high speed train if it can make it one way in 2 hours. People would use this service since you could make a day business trip of it and trains are way better than flying for shorter such trips if you ask me. If such a train would take 4 hours to make that leg its usefulness is much less and I would not want to see the government spend a whole lot of money making that happen. Spend that money on high speed corridors that will make a difference.
By
Amtrak Track, at 9:31 PM, August 26, 2009
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