What bothers me about it is that broad, visionary, and rather vague spending projects comport oddly with a general narrow-eyed, retrenching, penny-pinching approach to the budget. It makes the visionary proposals look insincere, as if they're just hypothetical sops, or if the real aim is to have the program fail so that they can point to it and say see, visionary programs don't work.
The same was true of Bush, and given that Bush, like Obama, was perfectly willing to spend money as long as it went to rich bankers and arms manufacturers, Obama is very much Bush III budgetarily. The most incongruous proposal Bush ever made was to spend zillions of dollars to send men to Mars. From a real visionary like JFK, or even LBJ, I'd have believed it. From Bush it just sounded ridiculous.
I think there are much better routes begging for improved train service than Washington-Boston: Washington-Atlanta along I-85, for instance, hitting Richmond, Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, and Greenville SC; or Philadelphia-Pittsburgh via State College; New York-Cleveland-Chicago; San Francisco-Los Angeles-San Diego; or Los Angeles-Los Vegas. The big cities of Texas would probably make more sense if the distances were greater and the densities of the cities were such that one wouldn't need to rent a car immediately upon arrival anyway.
Those are all good suggestions. I by no means intended to suggest prioritizing the NEC, only mentioning it in regard to what I don't want to see done. (There are inherent limits to the potential of the present right of way that can't easily or cheaply, or maybe even practically, be overcome.)
I'd be happy to see any of the ones you mentioned used for the sort of demonstration project I proposed.
Oh, I was agreeing with you. Even a significantly faster train--and it would be hard to build one in the existing train beds--wouldn't be a big improvement over Acela except for the full Boston-Washington run. Trains from NY to Washington, or NY to Boston, and are already at least the equal of air or car. The other routes I suggested, though, would be huge improvements, making train travel a viable alternative.
It occurs to me that a Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati route (three largish, dense-centered cities in constant interaction) would be good in itself and could be the start of a network of high-speed rails throughout the upper South and Midwest. Atlanta-Birmingham-New Orleans for the deep South. I don't know the Southwest well enough to suggest specifics.
He's a Republican in drag. We're screwed. He's the best speech-giver since at least Kennedy. We're still screwed.
A school teacher with 15 years experience makes, on the average, 2/3 of what college classmates with other majors make. Anyone serious about almost anything in the country's future is serious about actually paying teachers. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
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The same was true of Bush, and given that Bush, like Obama, was perfectly willing to spend money as long as it went to rich bankers and arms manufacturers, Obama is very much Bush III budgetarily. The most incongruous proposal Bush ever made was to spend zillions of dollars to send men to Mars. From a real visionary like JFK, or even LBJ, I'd have believed it. From Bush it just sounded ridiculous.
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I'd be happy to see any of the ones you mentioned used for the sort of demonstration project I proposed.
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It occurs to me that a Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati route (three largish, dense-centered cities in constant interaction) would be good in itself and could be the start of a network of high-speed rails throughout the upper South and Midwest. Atlanta-Birmingham-New Orleans for the deep South. I don't know the Southwest well enough to suggest specifics.
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A school teacher with 15 years experience makes, on the average, 2/3 of what college classmates with other majors make.
Anyone serious about almost anything in the country's future is serious about actually paying teachers. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Reply
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