President Barack Obama on Thursday outlined plans for a high-speed rail network he said would change the way Americans travel, drawing comparisons to the 1950s creation of the interstate highway system.
Obama was careful to point out that his plan was only a down payment on an ambitious plan that, if realized, could connect Chicago and St. Louis, Orlando and Miami, Portland and Seattle and dozens of other metropolitan areas around the country with high-speed trains.
There's no guarantee that the nation has the political will — Congress has often tried to reduce support for Amtrak — or the hundreds of billions of dollars and decades it would take to build a comprehensive fast rail system.
"This is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future," Obama said during an event at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is adjacent to the White House. "It is happening right now. It's been happening for decades. The problem is it's been happening elsewhere, not here."
The United States trails other developed countries in developing high-speed rail. The Spanish can travel the 386 miles from Madrid to Barcelona at speeds averaging almost 150 miles per hour. Japan's Shinkansen links its major cities at speeds averaging 180 mph and France's TGV train averages about 133 mph in carrying passengers from Paris to Lyon.
The only U.S. rail service that meets the Federal Railroad Administration's 110 mph threshold to qualify as high-speed rail is Amtrak's 9-year-old Acela Express route connecting Boston to Washington, D.C.
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