high-speed rail

The China Mystique Breaks Down 0
- July 25, 2011
At least 35 people killed in a Chinese high-speed rail crash–caused by lightning? This doesn’t make any sense at all. Electric rail technology is more than a hundred years old; how could China’s trains not be safeguarded against this common phenomenon? Plus, the second train ran into the first train simply because the first train […]
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House Votes to Take Back High-Speed Rail Funds 0
- July 19, 2011
One more nail in the high-speed rail coffin: The House of Representatives voted to redirect $833 million from high-speed rail to Midwest flood relief. This is money that the Department of Transportation had awarded to Amtrak and Northeast Corridor states in May, but since Secretary Ray LaHood hasn’t actually signed the checks yet, Congress can […]
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Why Some People Support High-Speed Rail 0
- July 14, 2011
One reason some people support high-speed rail is that it provides an opportunity for all sorts of fact-finding missions, such as this trip to Europe. “High-speed rail is becoming a reality in the U.S.,” says the Transportation Research Board (a part of the National Acadamies, a supposedly private but actually government-funded and government-created group of […]
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Spain’s High-Speed White Elephants 0
- July 7, 2011
How did I miss this story? A European publication describes Spain’s high-speed rail system as “a bona fide policy error typical of a nouveau riche nation.” Spain’s Talgo high-speed trains look a little like Donald Duck. Wikipedia commons photo by Peter Christener. Spain has spent or is spending 6 billion euros on a high-speed network […]
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NC Says No More High-Speed Rail 0
- June 20, 2011
The North Carolina legislature has forbidden the state’s transportation department from applying for more high-speed rail funds from the federal government. Before the department can apply for any grants that would obligate the state to pay $5 million or more in operating costs–which any high-speed rail project would do–it must receive approval from the state […]
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Bullets in a Railway Heart 0
- June 10, 2011
This “news” is a couple of months old, but Caixin Weekly, a Chinese business magazine, has published an extremely critical article about that country’s high-speed rail program. This report probably inspired similar but shorter articles in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and other publications.
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