GOP platform: Cut Amtrak, privatize airport security and focus highway money on roads – The Hill’s Transportation Report

No surprise here.

The platform approved by Republicans on Tuesday calls for the elimination of funding for Amtrak passenger rail service, private airport security screening and stopping the use of money earmarked for highway construction for other purposes.

The more than 30,000-word document was approved on the first full day of the 2012 GOP convention in Tampa, Fla. It includes many provisions that were pushed by Republicans in the House during recent negotiations over the new $105 billion transportation bill that was approved by lawmakers in June.

GOP platform: Cut Amtrak, privatize airport security and focus highway money on roads – The Hill’s Transportation Report.

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Filed under: Amtrak, Passenger Rail Politics

Acela defies California’s bullet-train naysayers – latimes.com

I don’t check in here so much any more. It seems rather pointless. To those of you who still fight the good fight, thanks and good luck. Frankly, I am sticking with my prediction that not one single mile of true European style high speed rail will ever be built for intercity transportation in the United States.

While this editorial does not disprove my prediction, It is a good perspective, even though the Washington-Boston corridor does not “make money” (whatever that means).. Read it all at the link.

Critics deride the line as a train to nowhere that will never attract the funding needed to run all the way from Sacramento to San Diego (with a spur to San Francisco) as originally envisioned. What’s more, they say, the train’s planning has been so undermined by special interests that it has no chance of running fast enough to fulfill its promise to get from L.A. to San Francisco in 2 1/2 hours. The naysayers aren’t necessarily wrong — there are serious troubles in trainville — but their aversion to risk is blinding them to the potential rewards. If the cynics fail to kill the train and more visionary leaders succeed in drumming up the funding needed to complete it, the line could become the most successful transportation project in the country.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at Amtrak‘s Acela Express.

Acela defies California’s bullet-train naysayers – latimes.com.

Filed under: Amtrak, Passenger Rail Politics, Regional USA Passenger Rail, United States High Speed Rail