Policy & Practice Comment: high-speed rail - will it play in Peoria?

摘要

Catherine Ross's lead paper is timely because it comes at a critical time in American transportation history, comparable to the mid 1860s which saw the launch of transcontinental railroad projects, and the mid 1950s which marked Congressional approval for the Interstate Highway Program. However, there is a key difference: in those two previous eras the United States led the rest of the world in the ambition and scale of its endeavour, while now it conspicuously lags. Not only have Japan, Europe, Taiwan and the Republic of Korea leapt ahead with their programmes, China has suddenly leapt forward from a standing start, completing over 4600 miles of high-speed railway by the end of 2010. In contrast, America has the Acela, a tilting train running over nineteenth-century tracks between Washington, New York and Boston, achieving a maximum speed of 150 miles an hour. As she explains, that should soon change with dozen schemes at advanced stages of preparation.