One cannot pursue this technology for future mobility of both people and goods. Wake up America. American transportation history has produced the way to travel into a better future.We cannot persist in attempting to move forward by looking in the rear view mirror.

A valid new transportation future vision would at least consider the following.
Transportation futures explore the relationship of the past and the present, memories and experiences with expectations.
The story of mobility indicates that events are continuous. Remembering what has worked in transportation rests between the power of knowing and the futility of the past.
How much and how little mobility has changed in cities needs to be viewed as a prologue to what it reveals.
Viewing the future advance of your leadership will be colored by unsettling use of three words “High-Speed Rail”. High Speed Rail should be given a kind eulogy.
Americans have turned cities into endless turmoil by continually accommodating an infrastructure supporting fossil fuels that consumes more than 40 percent of our cities land surface. We are making our living areas subservient to the collective movement of people and goods ultimately harming the health of our citizens.
To make sense of American Transportation requires your leadership toward the true meaning of reducing the infrastructure “footprint”. The cost of mobility on infrastructure stands on establishing a transition from
fossil fuel energy consumption to renewable energy resources.
Creation of the triad of policy, design and cost estimation is not easy.
However there is a practical solution available that will cast America into a better place in which to live and get around swiftly,economically in service of its citizens that is completely benign to the environment.
There is one transportation system you might want to consider. A fresh and realistic approach for the way we need ultimately to move people and goods is to carefully evaluate Evacuated Tube Transportation.
The most important result is to weigh the opportunity of this
transportation systems capability for less infrastructure footprint, less cost, less energy consumption, greater carrying capacities, greater safety and security based upon incremental American ingenuity,entrepreneurship and invention that began in the mid 1970′s.
The number of future jobs is most hard to estimate accurately as Americans as a whole will all benefit due to the fact we all need to design and participate in building wealth starting with a new and practical transportation system.

It would be reasonable for the author and the commentators understanding found in this new mobility system. Visit http://www.Et3.net for a view of realistic transformation.

These integrated and proven technologies bring forward an opportunity to take the next generation of Americans into an exciting transportation future with your new clarity of understanding of what “vision” means.

Makabusi

I am a total fan of HSR in Asia and Europe – having been a passenger on the Japan “Hikari” [LIGHT] and TGV numerous times. I would trade train transpo for air any day.

A thought in regards to Amy’s comment – as an infrastructure lover from way back, I am sad to announce that working in the environment of ARRA-funded infrastructure projects right now (our company is involved in two of them) is truly to be in the maelstrom of waste. The projects are so fast tracked that perversely design is an unwanted side effect. And relationships between professional peers are severely strained.

It will be interesting to look back at the Stimulus projects and see just what was created.

I am taken by Amy’s comment about the means by which infrastructure spending became refashioned as debt and pork. I believe this transformation occurred in the Reagan era, when all government spending was recast as waste. This was not the case with Eisenhower, who passed the Federal Highway Act, or Nixon, who created the EPA. It is ironic that Reagan’s simplistic calculation is now hurting all of us, left and right, individuals and business. But ultimately, we have to examine the fact that over 70% of the US population lives in “mega-regions”, yet Congress is tilted to represent states with very little population, thus we get infrastructure as pork like the “bridge to nowhere.”

Finally, as to the relationship between density and HSR, the two should reinforce each other. HSR is an enormous financial commitment, and should generate significant ridership between city centers. If we accept the transit-oriented development premise that village like density should surround light rail, and more significant urban density should surround subways, it stands to reason that maximum density should surround HSR. Part of the environmental goal here is to eliminate the shuttle and regional flights that clog our skies. New York’s three airports handle a third of the nation’s air traffic, so the entire nation benefits when HSR shuttles passengers from dense city center to dense city center. This is why to Kris’ comment I can only reply that I think in the big “mega-regions” of the US, the city centers are about as close as European cities (Washington to NY is a similar distance of Paris to London), and to close, no, I don’t want to change Presidents! Best regards.

Vishaan Chakrabarti
New York, New York

And what is more important than where the sufficiently dense neighborhoods are located are that there are sufficiently dense neighborhoods located somewhere.

What makes “HSR” at all three levels as defined by the Department of Transport important (even if the first tier would just be “good express rail service” in most parts of the world) is that it does not have any given density as a pre-requisite. High speed between stations thirty to sixty miles apart, after all, works as an effective density multiplier.

Yet it encourages density, by providing a traffic anchor to allow sub-marginal potential dedicated transport corridors to become viable dedicated transport corridors, providing the opportunity to locate transport focal points all along the route, including inner urban, suburban, and rural areas. And that, of course, permits the development of higher density neighborhoods than are presently feasible under our current sprawl-subsidy policy regime.