Thanks for the link, kendrew! That was actually an amazingly good read.
Some *interesting* points that I saw,
"Let's face it, if these things were commercially viable, it would have happened (in North America) a long time ago,"
That is the kind of thing that's really making me angry. "If it actually made sense to do it, then we would have done it before." That makes absolutely no sense! If everyone thought like that, absolutely nothing would ever get done!
"It changes your whole travel experience to be able to do a day trip to a city that's 400 kilometres away," said Leddy. "I would say we are right now 50 years behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to that component of our transportation system.
"
This is totally true. Our rail system is ancient. VIA uses rickety, unelectrified, low speed freight rails and trains that are actually rather close to 50 years old. Canada could greatly benefit from better rail service, yet we're not doing anything to actually get there. High Speed Rail would be a great start to improving our rail infrastructure.
Collenette, who admits it was difficult in government to promote massive infrastructure projects such as high-speed rail, said the key will be finding an integrated approach with participation from airlines and bus companies that now have concerns about losing customers to a new subsidized passenger-train system.
I just find this a bit funny, because rail is really not competitive at all with Bus or Plane. I'm actually surprised that a very large portion of people (40%!) would switch to HSR from cars, while only 18% would switch from planes. Seriously, HSR would be pretty much just as fast as a plane, yet it would be considerably less expensive, very much more comfortable and a lot more relaxing than plane.
Actually, speaking of planes and being relaxed, I was very surprised when there was a sign and San Francisco international airport that read "WARNING: There is currently a high terrorist threat level." It had a little arrow pointing to High that was on a semicircle that looked like it was ripped off from the forest fire hazard signs. I guess I can blame George Bush for that, but it seemed totally stupid to me
"It's unfortunate that governments on both sides of the border are spending billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to prop up an auto industry that's doomed to obsolescence by triple-digit oil prices when, in fact, those billions of dollars should right now be directed to an expansion of public transit and rail," Jeff Rubin, author of Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, said in an interview.
I totally agree with him. I also read his book, which was very interesting.