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Last October, we took a look at the possibility of Chicago becoming the center of a nine-state high-speed Amtrak network. With the passage of President Obama's stimulus package, though, this could be much closer to reality. Among the bill's provisions is $8 billion for high-speed transit lines, now seemingly up for grabs. It hasn't yet been decided how much money will be spent and where, but there's already controversy over which proposed line will get the money and even over one of the lines itself, one GOP'ers have taken to calling "The Sin Express," which would connect San Diego to Anaheim and then Las Vegas.
The "Sin Express" argument aside, it seems like a battle is shaping up for who will get the biggest slice of the transit pie as U.S. Senate Leader Harry Reid (of Nevada) will be making a play for his area, but he'll be going up against Illinois' own...President Obama. The Midwest line also has the Federal Railroad Administration on its side thanks to a layout that would connect up to 11 major metro areas (St. Louis, the Twin Cities, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, etc) within a 400 miles of Chicago, the proposed hub. As for what kind of train would be used, while Amtrak was batted about for the Midwest, the "Sin Express" folks are looking into maglev technology, a system which uses magnets to cause trains to levitate that is currently in use in Shanghai.
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Amtrak is the unfortuante child of subsidy and no market competition which means they don't have to do anything well or even be profitable ever.
I hate them. High-speed is a great idea. But Amtrak can't do anything right, ever.
Amtrak gets almost nothing in comparison to Highway and Air.
Love for it to happen, probably won't.
It really bugs me the way the GOP talks about San Francisco and Las Vegas as though they're not American cities. Then again, they also think all of this is a waste of money, so there you go.
This won't get off the ground unless Amtrak (or some other - gasp! - competition to Amtrak) manages to get its OWN rails instead of sharing freight lines. One of the biggest issues I have with riding Amtrak is that their trains are constantly having to step aside to give freight trains priority.
I'm really interested to see how this all goes down. it would be great to see Amtrak get some competition and also to see America's rail system catch up a bit with the rest of the developed world.
Why isn't there a proposed line from Cleveland to Pittsburgh?
I'm an ex-Chicagoan living outside Shanghai (in Hangzhou), and I can say that the maglev referenced in the article is nothing more than a publicity project. The thing runs mostly empty and at a prohibitively high price. On the whole, trains (including the non-maglev bullet trains) work great here, but that's because China has the population (1.3 billion) to justify them and the political power to seize the private property to build them efficiently. America doesn't.
It's disappointing that Obama thinks we have to borrow money from the Chinese to try to defy economics and politics to build this thing.