Andy Kunz of NewUrbanism.org and a member of the Congress for New Urbanism argues here that the time is right for the United States to build a national high speed rail network.

Travel by train is faster, easier, and so much more pleasant then the hassles of flying with huge security lines, constant delays, and the hassle of getting to and from the airports. Trains use a fraction of the fuel and produce 90% less emissions than planes.

The area of coverage of Kunz's plan is similar to the existing (and expanding) high speed rail network to connect the entire European Union. California might place the first stake in this network.

California is proposing the nation’s first high speed train system comparable to the TGV - an entirely new high speed system from Sacramento to San Diego. The cost is around $40 billion.

$40 billion may seem like a lot of money, but that amount of money is spent on a regular basis for transportation projects such as expanding a handful of airport runways, building a few new bridges or beltways, etc. The amount of money we have spent in Iraq could have built new high speed rail lines across America several times over, greatly reducing our need for oil, instead of being spent trying to secure more oil.

With the price of oil at an all-time high of $100 a barrel, can we leverage the certain record profits of the oil companies to help fund a twenty-first century transportation system that includes a national high speed rail system?

James Howard Kunstler writes a compelling argument for the re-emergence of passenger rail in this article published this month in Orion Magazine: Making Other Arrangements. As I have been saying all along about ODOT, take that 1.5 billion we plan to use to tear down history and replace it with more roads and spend the bulk of it on public transit...