(rshsdepot) Rail Projects Are Sign of a Quiet Revolution in Short-Haul Trips

["Kenyon Karl" <kenyon_@_getglobal.net>]

DELTA AIR LINES, for one, is plenty worried about business travelers who are
so fed up with airport problems that they're switching to the train on East
Coast routes. In an attempt to portray the train as an inferior option to
flying, Delta's ads do everything but imply that train passengers have to
watch out for Jesse James and his gang shooting up the lounge car.

The clear recent success of Amtrak's Northeast corridor rail system, and
especially of the high-speed Acela trains that share it, is usually treated
as an incidental consequence of the catastrophe of Sept. 11.

Hot-air hurricanes rage in Washington and in airline corporate suites about
the future of an air transport system based on huge, speculative
passenger-growth projections that some critics contend are unrealistic. But
a quiet revolution is gathering force, led by business travelers who, in
numbers now big enough to truly frighten the airlines, have either found
other ways to get there, or alternatives to going in the first place.

All over the country, ambitious new intercity rail projects are being
envisioned, often by states in partnership with private industry. In
California, speedy rail service between San Diego and Los Angeles is going
to be extended up to San Francisco. In the Midwest, work has already begun
on a big high-speed rail project that will link Chicago and other cities in
nine states. In Florida, plans are advancing for a high-speed link between
Orlando and Miami. In Texas, there's talk of a high-speed link between
Houston and Dallas.


http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/business/04ROAD.html?pagewanted=print&posi
tion=top


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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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