Could the US crack high-speed rail? (BBC)

By Tom Geoghegan
BBC News, Washington

A conference in New York is looking at plans to spend $600bn (£380bn) on a national network of high-speed railways, to rival continental Europe's. But how likely is it to happen?

The fastest train in the US pulls slowly out of platform 10 at New York's Penn Station, heading west.

Keeping a leisurely pace on the other side of the Hudson River, the Empire State Building sticks stubbornly to the horizon before eventually receding into the distance. Thirteen minutes later, the Acela Express makes its first stop, in Newark.

This is high-speed rail, American-style.

For many of the passengers packed on board the Acela Express to Washington DC, it is no voyage of discovery but a regular trip.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15251180



Scroll down to the chart to see whose "locomotive" is the longest.

http://ebaumnation.com/2010/04/16/the-train-that-never-stops

I'm sure there are plenty of issues to work out, but on the face of it, a fascinating concept.

OIL, OIL, OIL, Drill baby drill keeps us from developing mass transit.

The oil companies have our legislators both state and federal by the short and curlies and it will never be funded.

unlike china the usa has laws dealing with property rights and environmental laws. big rail already owns the most efficient rail right of ways and will not share those lines with high speed trains.

another big problem is our manufacturing capacity to make the bits and pieces of a nation wide or regional system. unless there`s a huge investment in that we`ll have to buy a lot of stuff from overseas. of course with our current trade deals, the usa manufacters and it`s workers would be on the outside looking in.

Deprecate long distance automobile and truck traffic. Easy. No property rights or environmental impact problems.

Route 66 and other similar historical highways would be restored for local use and long distance pleasure travel. The modern interstate highways would become high speed rail and freight corridors.

In my dream world personal transport is limited to 15 kilowatts (20 horsepower), which would make long distance automobile traffic quite leisurely, and greatly favor motorcycles and sleek lightweight low environmental impact automobiles.

A large urban assault sports utility vehicle would be quite comical with a 20 horsepower engine... :D