"There's no reason why Europe or China should have the fastest trains" -President Obama
"Building a new system of high speed rail in America will be faster, cheaper, and easier than building more freeways or adding to an already over-burdened aviation system - and everybody stands to benefit." -President Obama
"If Californians have the patience and the political will to stick with it, they'll have a project with extraordinary environmental, economic and transportation benefits. If they don't, they'll have worsening congestion, rising pollution and soaring transit expenses as gasoline prices continue their inevitable rise. We like the first vision of the future better." -Los Angeles Times, 1/7/12
"When she has finished building in 2012 what she began only in 2004, China will have more high-speed rail lines than the rest of the world put together.
It goes without saying that China's 42 dedicated near-arrow-straight, near-perfectly-level lines, with their 8,000 miles of 220-mph-capable track (half of it alreay built, and at a total predicted cost of nearly $400 billion), shame into insignificance America's achievements and aims, where the fastest train reaches only 125 mph, and that only on short stretches of track near Baltimore, and where the total length of planned, but thus far unbuilt, high-speed-capable rail is a laughable 563 miles." -Simon Winchester, Vanity Fair magazine
"Dollars spent that get Americans out of cars will ease traffic, save money, reduce pollution, slow global warming, and make us less vulnerable to volatile oil oligarchs." -Bloomberg
"Public infrastructure investment raises private-sector productivity... they literally are the veins and arteries of commerce." -Vice President Joe Biden, February 2011
"America needs to stop conducting it's politics in a parallel universe divorced from reality with no facts." "We need to put our country back in the future business." -Bill Clinton, 1/27/11
"A lot of people want to turn off the lights. I'm not one of them. We're going to build, we're going to invest, and California is going to stay up among the great states and the great political jurisdictions of the world." -CA Governor Jerry Brown, January 2012
"You have to begin to put the infrastructure in place to put in high speed trains... it should be a national priority. If the French can do it, why can't we?" -Gordon Bethune, Former CEO, Continental Airlines
"Passenger rail development takes time, but good things come to those who are patient and stay the course." -Thelma Drake, VA Department of Rail
"Building a world class transportation system is part of what made us an economic superpower."
"And now we're going to sit back and watch China build newer airports and faster railroads - at a time when millions of unemployed construction workers could build them right here in America."
"We shouldn't be in a race to the bottom... America should be in a race to the top, and I believe we can win that race." -President Obama, 9/8/11
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"High speed rail is the large scale, comprehensive solution to both climate change and the coming energy crisis." -ushsr
"California leads the way for many new things in this country, whether it's organic food or high technology or filmmaking. This will be the chance for California to lead the nation in transportation as well" -USHSR President Andy Kunz on CNN
"This is a turning point in California, a time when we decided to say yes to hope, yes to progress, yes to the future." -Senator Darrell Steinberg
"Dollars spent that get Americans out of cars will ease traffic, save money, reduce pollution, slow global warming, and make us less vulnerable to volatile oil oligarchs." -Bloomberg
"No economy can grow faster than its transportation network allows. With highways between California cities congested and airspace at a premium, Californians desperately need an alternative." -U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood
"Not only will California be the first state in the nation to build a high-speed rail system to connect our urban centers, we will also modernize and improve rail systems at the local and regional level." -Dan Richard, California High Speed Rail Authority
"Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir humanity's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical plan once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency." -Daniel Burnham
US HSRABOUT USUS HSR MAPBENEFITSTRAINSINFRASTRUCTURENEWSSUSTAINABILITY --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- US High Speed Rail Association Capitol Hill Office at Union Station 10 G Street NE, Suite 710 Washington, DC 20002 (202) 248-5001
