Dukakis: Put Rail on Election Track
Expensive — and imported — oil drains dollars from the homeland. Cars and jets pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. “Every metropolitan area in America is a moving parking lot at 5 o’clock in the...
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Derailing the Boondoggle
Eleven billion dollars. That’s two ones, three commas and a whole lot of zeroes, and it’s how much Boston paid for the Big Dig, over and above the $2.2 billion cost estimate tossed around during horse...
View ArticleStimulus Accelerates High-Speed Rail Hopes
Thanks to Barack Obama, Angelo Armenti may finally get the $250 million he’s been looking for. Armenti is the president of California University of Pennsylvania, and for the past few years he’s been...
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Taking High-Speed Trains into the Future
On March 11, 2004, at the height of the morning rush hour in Madrid's stately Atocha train station, 10 improvised explosive devices, like those used in Iraq and Afghanistan, ripped apart four commuter...
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High-Speed Heaven or Boondoggle Express
“Rail fans like to point out that Abraham Lincoln got roughly $7 billion — in current dollars — approved for the first transcontinental railroad during the Civil War. But in a time of crippling state...
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Start Slow With Bullet Trains
The prospect of building new rail corridors in the U.S. must seem expensive and daunting, as it did to Europeans 20 or 30 years ago. Old American track, in many cases, is too rickety or crowded for...
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High-Speed Rail's Weak Link Is Security
One of Germany's busiest high-speed rail routes is the link between Hamburg and Berlin. I've been using it for months. On the days when I need to be in Hamburg, I roll out of bed around dawn, shuffle...
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Terrorist Attacks on Railroads Would Be Difficult
A Polish 14-year-old caused a lot of damage in downtown Lodz three years ago by rigging a TV remote control that let him switch track points on the city's tram system. He derailed four trains and...
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Plugging High-Speed Rail Into Germany's Power Grid
Germans, feeling the bite of necessity, have announced another use for their electrified rail network: It can carry green energy, too. The German rail system has several thousand miles of high-voltage...
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California's High-Speed Rail Won't Go Nowhere
Since California announced it had funding for a short, Central Valley leg of its planned high-speed rail system, critics have made a point of (disingenuously) scratching their heads. Ed Morissey at Hot...
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High-Speed Rail Can Cover Its Operating Costs
Just three weeks after Florida Gov. Rick Scott made a point of thumbing his nose at $2.4 billion in Washington subsidies for a short high-speed rail line, saying it would be a money hole, his own...
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How High-Speed Rail Died in Texas, Thrived in Spain
Once upon a time there was sharp controversy in Spain over a plan for a high-speed rail line from Madrid to somewhere in Andalusia, which lies southeast of the capital, toward Morocco. Critics derided...
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High-Speed Rail Will Impact America's Freight Trains
The recent controversy over high-speed rail in America has obscured one fact about trains that defines — and pretty well explains — the main trend in rail traffic in the U.S. and Europe over the last...
View ArticleChina's High-Speed Crash Leads to Legitimacy Crisis
As their peers elsewhere, young Chinese readers have devoured the Harry Potter series. They would doubtless flock to see the final film that debuted in dozens of other foreign markets July 13. But in...
View ArticleCould China's Communist Party Have Jumped the Shark at Wenzhou?
The current issue of The New Yorker features a lengthy look at China’s Wenzhou train disaster of last July, calling it “the disaster that exposed the underside of the boom.” Author Evan Osnos examines...
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