High Speed Trains

Almost everywhere in the world except for the US use trains as a means of transportation across long distances. Some countries even have high speed train networks such as France, China and Japan. China has decided that just being a part of this list wasn’t good enough but they needed to be better than everyone else.

During their last test run, the Chinese hit a top speed of 302 miles per hour (486 kilometers per hour) between Beijing and Shanghai. This is a world record speed for an unmodified commercial train. When the line opens in 2012, the 824 mile (1318 kilometers) journey will be cut by five hours because of the ridiculously high speed of the trains. China already has the world's longest high-speed rail network, and it plans to cover 8,125 miles (13,000 kilometers) by 2012 and 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) by 2020.

This is all well and good for China but where the heck is our high speed railway?? In President Obama’s stimulus plan, there is $8 BILLION allocated for building nine lines for “bullet trains”. The plan calls for three lines to run through Illinois, turning Chicago into a bullet train hub. One would connect Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, to Chicago and might later join Milwaukee to Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. In Ohio, a line would connect the cities of Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus.

 Why isn’t this happening you ask you ask? One reason is because so government officials are worried that the money should be used to fix our road and highway system instead of creating a railroad that is “unwanted”.  Wisconsin Governor-elect Scott Walker wrote this in a letter to the Transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, "I believe it is a grave mistake for the federal government to insist on building an unwanted passenger rail system at a time when our roads and bridges are literally crumbling," 

I personally think that we should be building these trains as they would greatly lower the congestion on inter-city highways and would be much more convenient than driving and cheaper than flying. If you have a different opinion please comment bellow!