The Slower We Go, The Behinder We Get.
Officials in London and Berlin have announced that Deutsche Bahn, the German national railway, will be starting 200 mile-per-hour service linking the two capital cities. Running time will be 4.5 hours to cover the roughly 680 miles. Initial plans are to run three 16-car trains a day, each one able to accommodate almost 900 people.
A German ICE high speed train coming out of the Channel Tunnel on a test run in 2010.
Meanwhile, the anti-rail forces in California and in Congress are continuing their battle against our only high-speed rail project that would link Los Angeles and San Francisco. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) is the darling of the folks who think that “This is just a damn gummint boondoggle” is actually an argument.
And, to illustrate just how far some people will go to accommodate their commitment to the Culture of the Car, we can report that the other day there was a public auction of two parking stalls on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Sale price: $560,000. That’s right … for two uncovered parking spaces. I don’t know what kind of cars will end up sitting in those stalls, but they sure as hell ain’t gonna look anything like my 2001 Toyota!
Let those damn European Socialists wasting their money on trains that no one will ever ride…I bet you can’t take your guns on the train either…I’ll stick to my non-subsidized pickup truck.
Seriously, if we could just get all Americans to ride the trains in Europe just once, then maybe we could have trains like these here as well…