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Dream a Little Dream of High Speed Rail [1]

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Date: 2023-10-16  

I will admit, I’ve been utterly fascinated by rail travel since I was very young. One of my earliest memories is taking an ancient steam train from Connersville, Indiana down to Metamora, Indiana to take in the holiday scenery. It was cold, it was slow, the cars were ancient… and yet I fell in love with train travel.

It’s been 40 years since that trip, and I’ve watched the rail industry in the US do… nothing meaningful. Instead I’ve watched as cramped, uncomfortable, uncaring and expensive air travel take over. No one outside of airline executives actually LIKES commuter air travel. I personally dread it. Let’s face it, I’m not a small human. Flying economy is the human equivalent of paying for the privilege of being a sardine in a tin, and flying first class these days is frustratingly expensive, for not much improvement.

As you might have guessed, despite the obvious costs involved, my dream comes back to the idea of high speed rail. And specifically, living in Indiana, the “Crossroads of America”, I would love to see Indianapolis as the beginning hub of this system.

So outside of a nebulous “build HSR”, what exactly is this dream, I hear you ask… and I’ll quite happily tell you!

The first consideration would be where to base the rail hubs. The maintenance depots, the ticketing, baggage handling, parking, etc. And to that I say, outside of the actual tracks and maintenance buildings, everything you need already exists! At the Indianapolis International Airport!

But what about the tracks, I hear you cry. Yes, and look at the interstate corridors. Look at all that lovely, already government owned real estate that runs between the lanes of the interstate corridors. Sure, that’s not the only answer, but it’s a damn fine place to start! And going back to the first bullet point… Where are airports located? If you said “along interstate corridors” you’d be correct!

So what do I envision this hub to actually do? For starters, connect the Midwest. Indianapolis has interstate corridors that connect it to St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, and Chicago. From there the network can expand.

But what about profitability? Start with USPS, FedEx, Amazon and UPS. Make a percentage of each high speed train cargo cars. Rapid cargo and mail transport, combined with decent, not egregious passenger fares? It wouldn’t be instantly profitable, but I believe it would get there faster that you think… and because we’re using the airports as hubs, they all have built in infrastructure to handle the cargo loads.

And look, I can ramble on about this for ages due to my love of trains… But the reason I put this on DKos? Making this happen wouldn’t be cheap, and it wouldn’t be without political issues to overcome… but it would, 100% be Progressive. And once it’s up and working? It’s a political calling card for the redstate Midwest to look at. Something us blue folks in red states can point at and say “See, we did that!”

Alas, it’s only a dream, and I know that… but what a dream it is!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/16/2199693/-Dream-a-Little-Dream-of-High-Speed-Rail?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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