It doesn’t solve anything. In fact, it makes things worse – it just sounds nice.
If the left really wanted rail to take off again here in the U.S. they would reverse all of the damage they did by nationalizing passenger rail travel with Amtrak. Even then, to expect that a country as geographically large as ours will ever move passengers significantly across country by rail (without warm superconductors) is just crazy.
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First, you don’t say what Obama’s rail plan fails to “solve.”
Second, you don’t say how it would “make things worse.”
Third and most important, you don’t even bother taking a real look at Amtrak, which was set up to fail (especially by you lot on the right) from the moment it was conceived.
No realistic person expects high-speed rail travel, even via maglev propulsion, to supplant air travel for transcontinental travel, and Obama’s proposal doesn’t see to achieve that.
If anything, it seeks to give a boost to what several states have been trying to do n their own for several years now, create high-speed rail lines in heavily trafficked regional corridors, many of which are poorly or even barely served by airlines and are too long for people to efficiently drive (especially at current gasoline prices).
America’s transportation system has been unbalanced in favor of the airplane and the automobile for the last half-century. Creating a viable high-speed rail system could create that balance, take soe of the pressure off airports and highways, and cut gasoline consumption.
Your “nationalization” jab doesn’t connect, either. The entire air traffic control system in this country is paid for by taxpayers. Amtrak, meanwhile, doesn’t even own its own trackage.
How many times over the years, long before Barack Obama was elected, have the airlines gone to Washington DC, hat in hand, to ask for a bailout…and gotten everything they asked for?
“Nationalized” Amtrak, meanwhile, has had to fight almost every year to get just enough funds out of Congress to stay alive. Talk about “hypocrisy!”