Want 220 mph Amtrak Trains? Gotta Shell Out $151 Billion…

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NYC to DC in under 100 minutes. Trains reaching 220 mph. Customers clamoring to book tickets on this beautiful beast of modern transport. It sounds like a dream, and it’ll probably remain in fantasy land with the nightmarish price tag of $151 billion.

The Chicago Tribune reported that by 2040 high-speed trains could be hurtling up and down the east coast, making trips between New York, Boston, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia much more palatable time-wise. Amtrak has proposed a great improvement plan, but getting state and federal funding of that magnitude seems highly unlikely.

Source: Tree Hugger
Image: redstone via Shutterstock 

Chelsea (171 Posts)

Chelsea is a former newspaper reporter who has spent the past few years teaching English in Poland, Finland and Japan. When she wasn't teaching or writing, Chelsea was traveling Europe and Asia, sampling spicy street food along the way.


  • Bob_Wallace

    ”
    nightmarish price tag of $151 billion.”

    WTF?

    Three oil wars cost us at least $9,000 billion.  Nine trillion dollars.

    We ship close to  $400 billion out of the country every year to get someone else’s oil.

    We spend close to $60 billion every year for “homeland security” – another oil expense.

    Where’s your perspective?

  • jonesey jonesey

    This just doesn’t make sense. We can build these things if we choose to. Spain and China didn’t have any twenty years ago, and now they’re dripping with them. All they did was choose to spend money on HSR instead of (or in addition to) some foolish thing like subsidizing mountaintop removal and nuclear loan guarantees and (as mentioned above) causing the deaths of a million-plus people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  • Clavallie

    If we’d put the bulk of the stimulus money toward infrastructure projects (such as high speed rail, trash burning electrical generation plants, etc.) instead of the bookies and loansharks who caused the economic meltdown, we’d have stimulated the economy and have efficient transportation to boot.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Tracy/1064316217 Mark Tracy

    For the price of Bush’s military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, we could have paid for about 20 high speed rail systems across the United States.