Posted on 03/04/2013 2:59:36 PM PST by MeganC
Whether a high-speed rail system ever gets built in the United States is still up in the air, but if it is, artist and activist Alfred Twu has figured out exactly where those speedy rail lines should go.
Twu started working on this map in 2009, when President Obama's plan to build high-speed rail was unveiled. "There were many such maps being made by various designers," says Twu, but since then he's updated the map with labels and put it on Facebook, and it struck a chord. It's gone viral.
"With the huge response it's generated, I created a petition to the White House to fund such a system," he told Mashable. After just a week, that White House petition already has 27,528 signatures.
Twu's not just guessing where those routes should be, either. "The routes are based on various studies by government agencies and advocacy groups," he explains.
We like the map's colors and its overall design, into which Twu put a lot of thought. "Some artistic license was applied to make it more elegant and have it be a series of distinct lines like a subway map," he says. "Colors were selected to convey the idea of the U.S. being made up of several interwoven regional cultures that come together at major cities — like an internal melting pot."
Trains zipping across the continent at 220mph might sound like a far-fetched futuristic concept, but Twu thinks this project could be built out much like the Interstate Highway System was built in the 50s, he says. "I've seen 2030 and 2050 as potential dates from various advocacy groups," Twu added.
As you look at the map, you'll see that Twu included unshaded routes, which he says were "purposely left open to interpretation." He says the general idea of adding those routes would be that they would handle "lower-speed trains, as well as potential future high-speed routes."
But certainly there's not enough money to do something like this, given the economic situation in the United States at the moment, right? Tsu says cost estimates for a high-speed rail system like this range from $1-$2 trillion. Geez, that's a lot of money. He responded, "Sounds like a lot, but divided over four decades, that is around $25-$50 billion a year or 80-160 dollars a year per person. That's one tank's worth of gas money."
To get a closer look at the map, view or download this .PDF file.
What do you think, readers? Will this speedy rail system be going near your house? Should the United States catch up with the rest of the developed world and build the system, or should budget constraints keep us from spending money on this futuristic conveyance?
no one would ride them once a terrorist blows up a rail
That’s the way Willie would do it, do it, do it, and do it .... until you were fed up with it.
Frankly I would much rather taxpayers funded the research of genious level engineers than pay for faster choo choo trains!
Spot on...spot on...spot on...
HSR works in Europe, Japan and China because they have small amounts of land and are very densely populated. So train service can be quite profitable there even with government subsidies.
Here it would be a White Elephant. Expensive to build and maintain and impractical as day to day transportation. It is an Obamaphile’s wet dream though.
Which is why it periodically rises from the dead even after a stake has been driven through it. I don’t think it will become a reality, certainly not in my lifetime. HSR is just a hi-tech toy train fantasy.
Not practical. If built, it won't be high speed, not along the CalTrain right of way. And it will be expensive. Lots of lawsuits, hearings, delays happening now with the changes due to electrification of CalTrain trains. Which was forced by liberal idiots (diesel was fine, generating electricity for the existing train engines). High speed rail is impossible on that corridor, just can't happen.
And you can’t run that at 200 mph. Moreover all the efforts of the current ‘bullet’ train in California have been environmentally rebuffed in the Bay Area. My statement stands
Perhaps a new way to find revenue???? A whole new version of a Disneyland ride.....
Catch up with the rest of the world?
Whoopie!All of Europe is what? The size of California?
This article had to have been written by a very young kid, or a sub-70 IQ type.
No prairie dogs where I live...Wisconsin. Don’t really want them, thank you very much. Oppossums arrived in my state in the late seventies, and they say armadillos will eventually make it this far north. But I don’t know why the prairie dog population does not make its way eastward from the Dakotas. Can’t swim across the Missouri?
Of course they are! Have you ever tried using strikes to disrupt freeway travel? It doesn’t work very well....
Wow! They moved Birmingham to Montgomery!
Probably a page out of the Agenda 21 playbook.
Varmint rifles...
With all the prairie dog holes I see going out west, varmint hunters would have to shooting 24/7 for a decade to decrease the population substantially much less get rid of them completely. I expect to see the critters setting up their own tourist stop the next time the wife and I go out that way.
Why does Quincy, IL get a rail link?
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