Superfast Bullet Trains Are Finally Coming to the U.S.!

The future is here and it is the high speed train!

Superfast Bullet Trains Are Finally Coming to the U.S. Magazine Wired.com, I saw this at a bookstore today and Googled it and this article came up with this wonderful image in Wired Magazine. Addressing the train issue was the first thing Obama did the day after the state of the union speech. The president had brought up the subject earlier last spring but has picked this time to announce it and go into a little more detail of what he wants to do and the time frame he plans to do it in. There was alot of buzz on this whole event and the annoucements had been made ahead of time, I had read this before the big dog and pony show in Florida...

Smaller awards also will be made for improvements to existing rail lines. Overall, 31states will receive funding.
California is one of the big winners, receiving $2.25 billion to help build a high-speed rail system, as well as additional money for other rail projects.
The grants include $1.1 billion for a Chicago-to-St. Louis corridor, $1.25 billion for a Tampa-to-Orlando, Fla., corridor, $244 million for a Chicago-to-Detroit corridor and $810 million for work between Madison, Wis., and Milwaukee. In Ohio, $400 million will pay for work between Cleveland and Cincinnati.
Washington and North Carolina are getting roughly half a billion dollars each, and Florida will hear its good news directly from Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday.

A possible train, made in Monterial, which will be zipping around Floida as early as 2017.
Photo licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy of flickr user SurlygrrrlTM

The President has inherited a recession, a deficit and two wars. My good faith in him, my hope for a better future, has been extended for one more year. Obama's follow up talk on leaving Iraq was very well recieved. From someone who has been there twice, hearing talk like that is always incouraging. What makes me excited is that this is something I have always believed in and God forbid if oil gets very expensive, or if the short sighted masses realize that driving and flying is more expensive than an effent mass transit program, like high speed trains and light rail transit, this will establish an incredible legacy for the President. Even if those things don't happen, this is good business! I got so tired of hearing that Amtrak is a waste of money during the Republican era of running the United States and witnessing the funding for Amtrak be held hostage to add on questionable legislation to fund Republican causes, this makes me a little less cynical about how things work in America.

Mark Reutter of the Tampa Tribune put the situation of the the approach to the high speed trian issues in very good perceptive. I have less apprehension (and less knowledge about all the details like Mr. Reutter does) about how all this will evovle though. Maybe it is wishful thinking but the article in Wired magazine makes the whole project sound very exciting. Florida will be the first state to benefit from this by having the trains operational by 2017. The other regions of the country will be zooming along inbetween 2020-2025, right around the time I would like to retire and be traveling around the country by train as a train buff.

This is a hyperlink to the State of the Union I would like to see.