High-Speed-Train Wreck

The National Center for Policy Analysis discusses revamped rail systems with Iain Murray and Marc Scribner. 

The Obama administration and high-speed rail proponents have been pushing hard for a revamped passenger rail network. On October 28, the Department of Transportation gave out $2.4 billion in grants to high-speed rail projects. This is on top of the $8 billion that was included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the "stimulus" package. But in all of their cheerleading, high-speed passenger rail proponents never mention what is perhaps the most damning fact about these projects, say Iain Murray, vice president for strategy, and Marc Scribner, land use and transportation policy analyst, with the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Embarrassingly, passenger trains in the 1940s regularly met or exceeded these speeds. Only California's proposed high-speed rail corridor would resemble anything close to a "modern" European or Asian passenger rail line, say Murray and Scribner.

Read the full article at the National Center for Policy Analysis.