Very SLOW Hi-Speed Rail

Since I posted earlier about the lack of money in the stimulus package for Mass Transit, let me point to a New York Times story this morning identifying a slice of the money that will in fact go for high-speed rail, though as the story points out, it's not enough for a single train to be built. Note that a Mobile to Atlanta route is still a "designated high-speed rail corridor", though there's nothing high speed about the trains or the tracks there now. In 1999 I produced a piece for APT about European High Speed rail...Mag-Lev technology. A few years later there was a terrible accident at the big test track I visited in Germany, killing 23 people riding the test train. There is a South-East website, but no mention on it of Alabama participation. For that, look at the Alabama section of the Southern High-Speed Rail Commission with Alabama Louisiana and Mississippi as members. This morning's Times story suggests it is a waste to spread the $8 Billion out across the country, that it is such a small expenditure that it will only have a real impact if it is targeted for a single project.

That South-East website proposes a "trail" to run parallel to high-speed rail...heck, once you've bought the needed property and gotten funding for it, you may as well! If nothing else, the existence of a walking/biking trail might bring more environmentalists on board the very slow high-speed bandwagon.