Growing Needs and Votes Support A National Rail Plan
Voters are fed up with highly volatile and sometimes confiscatory fuel prices for their vehicles and tired of being treated like cattle at airports. They finally are waking up to the benefits of mass transit, especially high-speed rail. That growing support was underscored in November when voters approved a number of multibillion-dollar state and local transportation bond issues. But that patchwork quilt raises the question again, Why is there is no coordinated national rail program? The time is now, say many experts, and the flood of economic stimulus packages can provide the pacemaker to revive serious rail in America.
Many decades ago the U.S. was a world leader in high-speed rail. Today it can be considered barely a runner-up, with nary a glimmer of hope in sight for a mag-lev train anywhere. Years of neglect and underfunding have knocked rail out of a planned national multimodal transportation system that should tightly link road, rail, air and water transport.