« Collective Bargaining Rights for Home Care Workers | Following Congress Hotel Workers on Strike » |
Public Transportation Tue Jul 07 2009
High Speed Rail Is the Future (also, the past)
Why do conservatives hate trains? Not sure; but there's no doubt they do. Maybe they just love atomizing transportation, as they love atomizing everything else. But there's no doubt that high speed rail has been a solution to many of our infrastructure, congestion, and environmental problems, and that a lack of political courage has been the major stumbling block to its coming to fruition. There was a time when businessmen used to take the train everywhere; then the defunding of Amtrak in the 1970s essentially destroyed our country's rail infrastructure.
The folks at the Midwest High Speed Rail Association, including my friend Dan Johnson-Weinberger, who I know has been chasing this issue for at least as long as I've known him, released a report last week detailing just how a Chicago-St. Louis high speed rail corridor could radically alter the conception of space in Illinois:
Trains traveling at 110 m.p.h. on Illinois' first high-speed corridor would make the 284-mile trip between Chicago and St. Louis in about four hours -- shaving 1 ½ hours off current travel times by Amtrak trains now running up to 79 m.p.h., according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.
By going 220 m.p.h., however, those improved trip times would be cut roughly in half, to 1 hour and 52 minutes, according to the association. The estimate includes making intermediary stops in Champaign and Springfield, while providing customers with downtown-to-downtown service and beating the door-to-door trip times of airline travel.
The trip between Champaign and Chicago would take 45 minutes; and 90 minutes between Springfield and Chicago, the study said. The study estimated the cost of building the 220-m.p.h. Chicago-to-St. Louis corridor at $11.5 billion in 2012 dollars. It does not include the cost of new trains, maintenance facilities and other expenses.
lexslamman / July 7, 2009 11:02 AM
Whenever someone comes up with workable solutions to improving living conditions in this country and to avoid the upcoming oil-pinch, conservatives dig their heels in and put their fingers in their ears and rail against the facts. The fact is that there is a bipartisan Surface Transportation Act of 2009 in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee right now that would put real money behind high speed rail and public transit, which is exactly what this country needs. The GOP is stuck in the pocket of the highway and airline lobbies, who conspired to destroy passenger rail in this country 60 years ago, and will stop at nothing to prevent it from coming to fruition now.