Critics of High-Speed Rail Remind Me of Those Who Used to Yell "Get a Horse!" at Persons Who Had Acquired Automobiles

If your incoming e-mails are like mine, then they are full of links to an influential article entitled "Requiem for a Train" in a recent edition of Slate, sent to me by well-meaning friends and readers. In it, the author accumulates all the reasons for not embarking on a national campaign to upgrade our rail lines: it will cost too much, it will not achieve speeds over 100 miles an hour, it will attract far fewer riders than anticipated, it will be a boondoggle -- -something, I suppose, like Seward's purchase of Alaska in the 1800s.
 
Alaska, as you'll recall, was a boondoggle, too. An absurd waste of money. So was the automobile, a ridiculous unnecessary alternative to the animal-drawn carriage. Remember reading about the hoots that people delivered at others who were having difficulty starting their cars? "Get a horse!" was their favorite cry.
 
"Get a horse!" Those words resound in my mind when I read all the pettifogging, cavilling arguments against proceeding with high-speed rail. We will eventually lapse into a second-rate nation if we do not proceed with these projects. We will drown in automobiles, crash in planes crowded into air routes between close-in cities.
 
Have you driven recently between Ft. Myers and Naples, Florida, along the west coast of that state? Stewed for upwards of three hours on a highway only 60 miles long, as recently happened to me? Encountered traffic jams of an unprecedented sort? Have you driven between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale? Or from Tampa to Orlando? Have you been stuck for hours on highways between Los Angeles and San Francisco? Have you needed to devote several hours to a trip by air between New York City and Syracuse? Have you stewed at the airport, hearing one announcement after another of delayed flights for a route that should be handled by rail, not by air?
 
We have no alternative to high-speed rail.
 
The arguments arrayed against high-speed rail by that avatar of intelligent planning, the Governor of Florida, or by the affluent residents of California who hate the idea of a nearby rail line, remind me of the people who used to shout "Get a horse!"
 
The rest of the world -- nations from China to western Europe -- are unanimous in their support of high-speed rail, and are busily engaged in bringing their countries into the twenty-first century. We should join them.