[Mike P]

Sooner or later, you have to spend money on infrastructure. The federal interstate highway system was begun 50 years ago, and parts of the major N/S and E/W routes are almost that old. Pretty soon we're going to be dropping a bridge a week into major rivers across the country if we don't start throwing money into it. Or developing an alternative. As much as it will cost to build high speed rail links between major cities, it will cost 10 times as much to rebuild the entire Eisenhower Interstate system, and 100 times as much to build its replacement.

Have you drven over the Braga Bridge lately??--tell me that your knuckles don't get a little white when you look up, see all that rust on the superstructure and grab the wheel a little tighter. Trucks with more than two axles can't cross a bridge on the major N/S Interstate route between Boston and NY, as we speak.

There aren't any easy answers. Train travel between cities is going to look mighty attractive come the day that we spend as much money per gallon on gas as the Europeans do, or we piss off the wrong sheik and have to spend 2 hours in line on odd/even days waiting to get enough fuel to get to Grandma's for Thanksgiving.

The big problem is, we ignored it for too long. We should have been looking for solutions like this 36 years ago when our dependence on foreign oil was brought to light by the first embargo.