One of the best ways to cut down on climate change-causing emissions is for people to give up driving their individual cars when possible, and use low-carbon public transportation. That will get easier to do in the U.S. very soon if the President’s plan for high-speed rail proceeds as planned.

White House launches high-speed rail push with $53 billion plan

The Obama administration on Tuesday called on Congress to back a six-year, $53-billion investment in high-speed, intercity rail, saying it was “dreaming big” on reinventing US infrastructure.
But Republicans, now wielding the power of the purse after November’s mid-term election triumph, slammed the plan, and called on the White House to stop throwing money at America’s “Soviet-style” railroad system.
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President Obama is beginning to fulfill some of his promises that he made in the State of the Union Address last month.  Next week he will release his federal budget that includes a 6-year, $53 billion dollar plan to build high-speed rail networks across the country. Obama also insisted that this project will include strong buy-American provisions that attract American industries and create 10s of thousands of American jobs.  Unfortunately, Republicans aren’t on board with the plan. The chairman of the House Transportation Committee, John Micah, advised the President to squander limited taxpayer dollars on marginal projects”.  There is nothing marginal about high speed rail or rebuilding infrastructure or greening our transportation system in the U.S.  In fact, it’s exactly what we need to do to create jobs and start replacing our outdated transportation in this country.

Especially when nations like China are far ahead of the U.S. in new technology investments.  The rest of the world is already well ahead of the United States on high speed rail. You can travel across much of Europe this way, and wouldn’t it be nice if Americans could park their cars for weeks out of the year and travel by high speed rail all over the country, or just to work?  No, that would not be good for Republican’s best friends like Big Oil, which is why they are against it.  In fact Republicans are usually against doing things that are good for Americans and jobs if it causes any business friend of the GOP to potentially suffer profit losses.

California is the state in our country that is usually ahead of the rest of the country on environmental issues, and new technology.  California is already developing high-speed rail.  (So is Florida).

California developing high-speed rail stations
Cities that expect to have passenger stations for California’s proposed high-speed train system will get help from the state to plan for development around the stations.

Meeting Thursday in Sacramento, the California High-Speed Rail Authority board approved putting up as much as $200,000 per station site. The board also approved guidelines for station-area planning. The money is intended to promote connections between local transit systems as well as what planners call “transit-oriented development” to encourage greater ridership on the high-speed trains. In the [...]