Word: speeded
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...down urban corridors of dust or mud. But the rig was, for its time, a Rolls-Royce. Travel is literally a state of mind. When trains got started in the early 19th century, people thought that moving 20 m.p.h. might cause insanity. On the other hand, it is not speed but an enraging motionlessness--the stalled freeway, or the runway where you sit for an hour or two awaiting takeoff--that causes derangement today. We are spoiled. It has been a while since we sat back in a plane or a car and told ourselves, "Life has not many things...
Would it be possible for the U.S., with its great distances, to divide and organize itself for rail? To reinvent its railroads in order to make them fast, efficient and attractive in regional systems, aiming for a European scale and speed and coherence in each region? (For example: Sacramento-San Francisco-Los Angeles-San Diego; Chicago-Milwaukee-Detroit-Cincinnati-Cleveland-Minneapolis; Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Baltimore-Washington...
...Would it be possible for the U.S., with its great distances, to divide and organize itself for rail? To reinvent its railroads in order to make them fast, efficient and attractive in regional systems, aiming for a European scale and speed and coherence in each region? (For example: Sacramento-San Francisco-Los Angeles-San Diego; Chicago-Milwaukee-Detroit-Cincinnati-Cleveland-Minneapolis; Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Baltimore-Washington...
...forget Amtrak. Comparisons have been loaded to denigrate trains in favor of cars and air travel. It is true the rehabilitation of the nation's railroads would cost billions. But the arithmetic on costs and energy efficiency argues, in the long term, in favor of boldly creative, high-speed regional rail systems that would take the environmental and traffic pressures off highways and airports...
...halfhearted, partly realized plan will only validate the criticisms and doom the new railroads. What is needed is leadership of the kind that Charles de Gaulle demonstrated in backing France's immensely successful high-speed rail, and vision on the scale of President Eisenhower's push for the interstate highway system. The 21st century paradox is that it is not railroads that are old-fashioned and retrograde but rather those essentially inefficient flying machines...