Barack Obama annouces high-speed rail plan for 10 busiest US routes

Barack Obama today called on Americans to climb aboard with his ambitious vision of building high speed rail corridors along 10 of the country's busiest routes.

In a high-profile announcement before leaving for a trip to Mexico yesterday, Obama said America could not let itself be shunted to the side while other countries invested in modern transportation systems.

Obama said the funds would help ease traffic on roads and in airports that added up to $80 billion in lost productivity.

"High-speed rail is long-overdue, and this plan lets American travellers know that they are not doomed to a future of long lines at the airports or jammed cars on the highways," he said.

The support for rail travel helps solidifies Obama's plans of turning the economic recession into a moment of opportunity. Some $8bn in the economic rescue plan unveiled in February was allocated for investment in rail travel and must be spent over the next two years.

Obama has asked for another $5bn in his budget for rail travel to be spent over the next five years.

The administration offered another glimpse of its plans to green the economy later today.

In a visit to Missouri, the vice-president, Joe Biden, announced $3.3bn in grants, also allocated under the recovery plan, for utility companies moving to invest in smart grid technologies.

The infrastructure spending outlined today is the most ambitious since the days of Eisenhower - even though it amounts to only a fraction of the state investment in rail in European countries.

Even so, Obama's announcement met a broadly positive response from public transport groups and environmentalists. "The president is on the right track," said Nancy Kete, director of the World Resources Institute Centre for Sustainable Transport.

However, she said Obama should follow up on his plans for inter-city rail travel by investing in city bus routes, and charging commuters who travel in private cars.

America currently has only one high speed line: the Acela which runs between Washington, New York and Boston. But the train - though built to a capability of reaching speeds of 150mph - rarely attains speeds of above 80mph because of aging and twisting track.

White House officials said the administration wanted to upgrade existing lines and set down new track to create 10 corridors where trains could reach speeds of 100 mph.

That is still slower than the European standard, but it marks a major change for a country which typically has devoted the bulk of transport spending to new roads and airports.

The White House said the potential new high speed routes would include California, where voters have already approved a line that will allow travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2 1/2 hours. Other priority lines include: the Gulf Coast corridor running from Houston through New Orleans to Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta; the Chicago Hub Network, which would link Obama's home town to Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St Louis, with stops across Ohio into Kentucky; the south-east corridor from Washington, DC, down to Jacksonville; and from New York City to Buffalo.

Upgrades and improvements would also be undertaken along the most heavily travelled route between Washington, DC, and Boston.

Transportation officials said later there was a good chance that six proposed routes, which have already been approved for high speed rail, will get funding.

In Obama's vision, the spending would utterly transform the American travel experience.

"Imagine boarding a train in the centre of a city. No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes," he said to laughter. "Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination."

The president dismissed the idea that America could not afford to spend money on rail, noting that France, Spain and Japan already had far superior rail travel.

"This is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future. It's happening now. The problem is, it's happening elsewhere," he said.

This article first appeared on The Guardian

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