Slow Train Coming
High-Speed Rail is coming to the United States in a uniquely American way.
A few days ago the Sunrise Movement, a progressive advocacy group tweeted the following:
While the left sees high-speed rail as daydream they would like to see become reality, others believe this is nothing but a dream. Critics say that while places like Europe and Japan can have high-speed rail because they are smaller nations, the United States is just too big to have something like this. Others on the right sum up high-speed rail in just one word: boondoggle. It’s considered a waste of money.
Taking one look at this map, I would agree that this seems to be a pipedream. We aren’t going to get a network of high-speed rail lines crisscrossing America. In a time when it is difficult to build pipelines or freeways, I don’t see how the government would be able to buy tons of land without tons of angry people threatening to block the project. The Sunrise Movement’s dream of a continent-wide rail system isn’t happening, not because we are too big of a nation, but because it’s not…
