![]() High-speed rail helps solve the affordable housing crisis by providing access to a wider housing market and taking pressure off the high price ‘hot spots’ by levelling out pricing at the regional scale. Rail opens up the market for more affordable housing Whereas, on the other hand, high-speed rail can be zero carbon transportation. The American transportation system is the most inefficient on earth, with most of the country driving gas-guzzling, single-occupant SUVs hundreds of miles a day around sprawling communities. Transportation is the single largest source of carbon causing climate change. This would replace our inefficient light freight shipping network – consisting mainly of long-distance trucks and airplanes – which has an enormous carbon footprint and clogs our highways. High-speed rail offers an alternative light freight shipping infrastructure in combination with its passenger transport, lowering the cost (and increasing reliability) of shipping light freight goods and perishables throughout the country. Rail offers an alternative for light freight The California HSR system under construction in the Central Valley will be powered 100 per cent by renewables.ĥ. High-speed rail is the world’s greenest form of transportation and can be 100 per cent powered by renewable energy, bypassing the entire global-oil-military-supply chain. ![]() None of this is sustainable or desirable. Maintaining this enormous flow of oil requires America to dig up oceans, protected national forests and the arctic tundra risking our clean drinking water, our health and our safety – without forgetting the expensive consequential wars. It has a positive effect on energy and national securityĪmerica is in deep trouble due to our extreme oil dependency for 98 per cent of our transportation consuming some 20 million barrels of oil every day, 70 per cent of which is for transportation. Japan was the first nation to build high-speed rail in 1964 and has since transported 10 billion passengers without a single fatality! France has a similar record with their 30 years of high-speed rail operations, as do several other countries. High-speed rail is the world’s safest form of transportation proven by decades of safe operation. Rail is saferĪpproximately 43,000 people are killed every year in car accidents in America and another million more seriously injured. Flight delays cost America more than $31 billion per year in wasted time – a cost that high-speed rail can help alleviate. High-speed rail delivers +200mph transportation as an alternative to the flying nightmare, offering no hassles, no security lines, no delays and plenty of room to work or play. High-speed rail is an alternative to flying High-speed rail is transformative and can reverse this situation – delivering 200mph transportation for every train, every day – without delays or congestion, ever. Road widening projects – justified by claims they relieve congestion – have only made congestion worse across America. It relieves congestionĪmerica faces epic congestion in every major metropolitan region of the country, costing $124 billion per year in wasted time and fuel. High-speed rail is truly a miracle technology that could solve many serious problems simultaneously. Since transportation is the single largest consumer of oil (and producer of carbon), USHSR has launched our ‘Top 10 Reasons to Bring High-Speed Rail to America’ to address the transportation problem head on. Reasons for bringing high-speed rail to the US The sooner American leaders wake up to this simple fact, the better off we will be as a nation. However, in reality, capitalism is dependent on the planet for much of the raw materials and services it provides (our food, water, air, energy, resources, raw materials, regulating services, etc.). It’s now a case of ‘American capitalism versus the planet’. Their heavy influence over our national and state politics, the media, and public opinion, has kept the country stuck in the 1950s: a time of big oil, big autos, and big roads.Īmerica continues to spend $200 billion each year expanding roads, while starving its rail systems. America’s reliance on its road networksĪt the root of this situation is the fact that many of America’s largest corporations supply or use vast quantities of fossil fuels. Climate change and peak oil are both coming into focus with the uncomfortable awareness that America is the world’s largest contributor to both problems (mainly from our very inefficient transportation system), while doing the least of any nation to address either problem. The United States stands at one of the most important crossroads in history. ![]()
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