Half a century ago, a young presidential hopeful campaigned and won on the slogan “let’s get America moving again.” Today, another young president is faced with a country listless and an economy that is facing its greatest threat since JFK was a boy in the 1930s. And he, too, wants to get America moving again — literally. Last week President Obama announced a $13 billion plan to create a genuine high-speed railway network for the US.

This is long overdue, and if pulled off correctly, could indeed be a visionary change, the sort of thing that Barack Obama was elected for. Visitors to the US have remarked for years how mired in antiquity, overpriced and underperforming, is its rail system, especially when compared to Europe and Japan. (And soon, China.) Trains are the last option for travelers, even between two relatively close major cities. Only a tiny fraction of the traffic between Boston and New York, or New York and Washington, for example, travels on rails; planes and buses still do better, even though airports are far out of town and buses aren’t precisely quiet and comfortable. Anywhere else in the world, a stretch of four great cities in a line — DC, Philadelphia, New York and Boston — would have been an invitation to a profitable, much-used high-speed line. In America, that didn’t happen, because of government disinterest in leaping a few hurdles. Fortunately, the growing climate-change consensus and the availability of stimulus funding might finally clear those hurdles. (The arguments are strong: reducing congestion, creating jobs, cutting carbon emissions and oil imports.)

... contd.