Opinion: A new plan for high-speed rail [Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen]

Opinion: A new plan for high-speed rail (The following column by Charles H. White Jr. appeared on the Baltimore Sun website on July 6, 2010. Charles H. White Jr. is former head of the Railroad Policy Office in the U.S. Department of Transportation and Professor of Logistics at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y. He lives in Annapolis. His e-mail is chwhite2@hotmail.com.)

BALTIMORE, Md. — The Obama Administration has discovered high speed passenger rail as both a job stimulus and a means for balancing fuel and environmental constraints with increasing personal transportation needs. Various state and regional groups, supported by self-proclaimed high speed rail experts, are competing for federal seed money grants. Winners will be chosen; losers encouraged to try again with the hope of an ever increasing fund supply. The U.S. Secretary of Transportation visits foreign countries to see how high speed passenger rail works. China offers to supply the U.S. with real know-how, experience and equipment, and the transportation secretary is cautiously optimistic that the U.S. railroads might be cooperative in this whole effort.

Opinion: A new plan for high-speed rail [Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen].

Filed under: Amtrak, Passenger Rail Transportatio Policy, United States High Speed Rail

Will High-Speed Rail Drive Business? – Transportation Experts

Will High-Speed Rail Drive Business? – Transportation Experts.

Filed under: Passenger Rail Transportatio Policy, United States High Speed Rail

Books: New book states case for passenger trains as 21st-century transportation | rgj.com | The Reno Gazette-Journal

In “Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service,” Chelsea Green Publishing, $17.95 paperback) James McCommons states a case for passenger trains as a key player in 21st-century transportation policy, but he also describes the massive financial costs that such a future would require. He examines the ambivalence to such a future of many railroad and government officials, and the attitudes of the American travelling and commuting public.”The talk is in the next 30 to 40 years we’ll need to double the size of the interstate highway system and build new airports,” said McCommons, who spent much of 2008 riding Amtrak and other passenger trains around the country, gathering background on the future of passenger trains, freight railroads and partnerships among government entities, Amtrak and railroad companies.

Books: New book states case for passenger trains as 21st-century transportation | rgj.com | The Reno Gazette-Journal.

Filed under: Passenger Rail Transportatio Policy