- Baltimore/Washington Maglev, last updated, 2003!
- California Maglev Project, it floats, see, right over the rails!
- California High Speed Rail, an actual .gov! Check out the top news item, "House Bill Could Breathe Life into California High-Speed Rail". That's right, it "could breath life" into the project! Whee!
- Alberta High Speed Rail (2005), yep, 2005.
- Midwest High Speed Rail Association, right in President Obama's back yard, it can't lose (am I getting ahead of myself here?)
- Texas TGV, great alliteration, but you can't run a train à grande vitesse in Texas, it just ain't American! Now the Freedom Train, that I would ride!
- Florida Overland Express, another great acronym, but RIP, 1996.
Some of these attempts actually spent millions (like the Texas TGV), but they all met/are meeting the same fate. Millions won't do it, try billions, guys. That's what it took to build the continental railway system in the first place, in a financial bubble worthy of the dot-com era – and don't forget, generous government subsidies via land grants.
Meanwhile, freight rail in North America is going strong, stronger than Europe, even! But before passenger rail takes off, North Americans need to be willing to park their cars. So far, the gas price surge has only generated a surge of news stories on more efficient cars, electric cars, and small cars. But very few stories about not using your car.
3 comments:
Darn Canuck -- don't you know that not using your car or for that matter using a car with more than one person or using a car with a capacity of less than a ton is simply un-American?
The dream of Texas rail hasn't died yet. Freedom Train? C'mon give us Texans a little credit -- we're now calling it the Texas T-Bone Corridor. There's also the mega highway + commuter rail Trans-Texas Corridor (you know the proposal with flash maps has to win).
@freight: you can ship on water ways too, that's one reason why freight rail share is lower in eu than u.s.
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