High-speed rail funding challenges. Also, the way the Europeans and Asians approach it.

Obama's rail plan not so high-speed - OregonLive.com

Obama's rail plan not so high-speed
by The Oregonian editorial board
Sunday April 19, 2009, 10:24 AM

President Barack Obama wants America to move swiftly to a system of high-speed rail travel, but his plan for doing so looks anything but fast-track.

Instead, it looks more like the Amtrak Cascades train crawling slowly through North Portland.

Give the president credit, though, for seizing on what should be a national priority: catching up with European and Asian countries that are decades ahead of the United States in developing bullet trains.

"This is not some fanciful, pie-in-the sky vision of the future," Obama said last week. "It's been happening for decades. The problem is, it's been happening elsewhere, not here."

Strong, welcome words. But he didn't back them up with a plan even close to being bold enough to bring America much closer to developing trains as fast, efficient and sophisticated as those in overseas nations.

Governors of Oregon and Washington rightly applauded the Obama administration for including the Pacific Northwest corridor -- Eugene, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. -- in a federal list of 10 potential high-speed rail projects. The governors also commended the administration for making $8billion available for this work as part of the federal economic stimulus package.

But let's get real: $8billion? That may sound like a big pile of money, but when it comes to building bullet trains, $8billion wouldn't lay track from Eugene to Shedd, let alone get work started on high-speed rail projects proposed in almost every populous corner of the country.

True, Obama's proposed budget would provide another $1billion a year for five years for passenger rail, and that's a huge improvement over the previous White House. Nobody, however, should have any illusions about what that money will buy.

In the Northwest, it will help pay for some long-overdue upgrades to the needy Amtrak Cascades line. Realistically, tough, the vast bulk of the federal cash should go to rail projects already under way elsewhere.

California is especially deserving, as voters there last November approved nearly $10billion in bonds for a San Diego-to-Sacramento bullet train. But as the Los Angeles Times pointed out, both the California and federal high-speed rail visions rely on borrowed money.

By contrast, Japan and the European nations impose steep gas taxes that pay for the super-fast electric-powered trains that travel more than 125 mph. The taxes also create an incentive for people to ride the trains by making driving highly expensive.

This nation still doesn't get it. Here, the government applies the term "high-speed" to diesel trains that can travel a mere 90 mph. That's like calling dial-up Internet service "high-speed" and therefore fast enough.

Obama's rail investment is a welcome step. However, as long as the United States insists on being the land of cheap gas and low taxes, it will continue to be the land of congested freeways and plodding passenger trains.