The first time I rode high-speed rail was in Italy. Bruce and I were on our honeymoon.
(I had the good sense to break the part above into two sentences.)
The trains were sleek, safe, civilized, clean and OMG fast. During the rides we passengers talked, slept, read, drank espresso or wrote.
The photo I tried to snap of sunflower fields were a golden schmear.
I returned to the U.S. even more in love with trains than I already was, and totally bewildered.
Why couldn’t the United States have high-speed rail? Why were we Americans so devoted to our endless miles of freeways, asphalt and emissions pollution? How could the the U.S. be so developed in some ways yet so far behind in high-speed rail? Why had time stood still with U.S. train technology?
Photo courtesy of the Shasta Historical Society
We returned to Europe two years ago for our 10-year anniversary, where once again I was reminded of the retarded, backward thinking of our U.S. transportation system. It killed me to think that in the decade since our last visit to Italy, high-speed rail hadn’t made any progress in the U.S. at all.
But maybe something was in the works after all.
Thursday at the White House President Obama announced his plans for high-speed rail in America.
You can watch a video of President Obama’s Thursday speech or read it in its entirety below. But here are the parts I loved best:
President Barack Obama: “What we’re talking about is a vision for high-speed rail in America. Imagine boarding a train in the center of a city. No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes. Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination. Imagine what a great project that would be to rebuild America.
Now, all of you know this is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future. It is now. It is happening right now. It’s been happening for decades. The problem is it’s been happening elsewhere, not here.
In France, high-speed rail has pulled regions from isolation, ignited growth, remade quiet towns into thriving tourist destinations. In Spain, a high-speed line between Madrid and Seville is so successful that more people travel between those cities by rail than by car and airplane combined. China, where service began just two years ago, may have more miles of high-speed rail service than any other country just five years from now. And Japan, the nation that unveiled the first high-speed rail system, is already at work building the next: a line that will connect Tokyo with Osaka at speeds of over 300 miles per hour. So it’s being done; it’s just not being done here.
There’s no reason why we can’t do this. This is America. There’s no reason why the future of travel should lie somewhere else beyond our borders. Building a new system of high-speed rail in America will be faster, cheaper and easier than building more freeways or adding to an already overburdened aviation system –- and everybody stands to benefit.”
(… Oh happy day, this next portion of Obama’s speech mentions California, where our state is perfectly poised as one of the first recipients for high-speed rail money for two reasons: The Governor’s Proposition 1B funding, plus $190 million included in the
High Speed Rail bond passed last November.)
” … Or California, where voters have already chosen to move forward with their own high-speed rail system, a system of new stations and 220 mile-per-hour trains that links big cities to inland towns; that alleviates crippling congestion on highways and at airports; and that makes travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles possible in two and a half hours.”
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Finally, a president on the right track.
Click here for the White House recording of President Obama’s entire speech about high speed rail.
Click here for the entire speech about high speed rail by Vice President Joe Biden and President Obama
Click here for the California High Speed Rail website, including a 6-minute video of the world’s high-speed rail systems. Warning: May cause high-speed rail envy
