High-speed rail is the way to go. We finally have a president and a vice president who understand the important role that trains can play in meeting the United States' transportation needs as our air lanes and highways congeal. But what our elected officials, clamoring for glamorous -- and expensive -- projects, seem to overlook is, at least on an interim basis, simply upgrading conventional rail.
California has invested heavily in frequent passenger trains in several heavily traveled corridors, with a vast network of connecting buses bringing Californians from offline communities to the trains. Even in auto-loving California, people are riding these trains and buses, so much so that last November the voters approved spending billions of dollars for truly high-speed rail.
Closer to home, Illinois has invested millions of dollars in incremental upgrading and expansion of the network of passenger trains connecting Chicago with other Illinois cities and with Milwaukee and St. Louis. Ridership has skyrocketed even though the trains aren't "high speed." They're frequent and competitive with driving.
While we're planning high-speed rail to connect the Twin Cities with Chicago, let's consider incremental improvements of the existing route. Most people don't know that in the 1930s, using steam locomotives, the Milwaukee Road's Hiawatha trains connected Minneapolis and Chicago in as little as six hours and 15 minutes. Let's try to emulate what we did nearly three-quarters of a century ago, which we could do within a year. With a morning, noon, and late afternoon departure and maybe an overnight train for those with early-morning business, with connecting buses to and from offline communities like Madison, Wis., and Rochester, it'd be a huge success.
LOUIS HOFFMAN, MINNEAPOLIS
