Train travel is one of the lowest impact ways to get from point to point short of walking, jogging or bicycling. By 1929 the U.S. boasted one of the largest and most used rail networks in the world, but U.S. carmakers began a concerted campaign to acquire rail lines and close them.
That, coupled with a major push in Congress to build the world’s most extensive interstate highway system, combined to shift Americans’ tastes away from rail travel and toward cars.
The Obama Administration has now allocated $8 billion of stimulus funds to upgrade and increase speeds on existing lines and create new high-speed lines in 10 corridors nationwide, including in the Southeast. A 2006 study by the Center for Clean Air Policy and the Center for Neighborhood Technology concluded that building a high speed rail system across the U.S. (similar in scope to that proposed by Obama) would likely result in 29 million fewer car trips and 500,000 fewer plane flights each year.
That would save six billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions every year — the same effect as taking a million fume-belching cars off the road.
[Source: EarthTalk, from e-magazine, 28 Knight Street, Norwalk, CT 06851. Phone: (203) 854-5559/x106 - FAX: (203) 866-0602, earthtalkcolumn@emagazine.com]
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