Why not the 21st?

THE PROTOTYPE HAS BEEN LEVITATING FOR SIX YEARS, FOUR MONTHS, TWELVE DAYS

TOTAL POWER USAGE: ZERO

SEE www.fastransitinc.com

We here at Fastransit and other maglev companies continue to be frustrated by the billions being pledged by the federal government and a number of states to construct a high-speed passenger rail system. Huge sums will be spent to develop a series of largely unconnected routes, in many cases requiring the acquisition and preparation of new rights of way where land values are quite high.

And for what? Even ignoring the likelihood of project delays/changes resulting from politics, environmental concerns, and our litigious nature, parts of the country where automobiles and airplanes carry nearly every inter-city passenger and the one part of the US where a fair number of people already ride the rails (the Northeast) will find that their regional rail systems have advanced from the McKinley era to the Mitterand era. This is certainly an improvement but, not long after the assassination of the former, the American love affair with the automobile entered the awkward dating phase; by the time the latter was in high school the relationship had moved into the serious/committed mode in which it remains today.

While pundits who cite the US's low population density and its emphasis on rugged individualism as the key reasons that we love our cars are not necessarily off the mark, they have ignored the fact that automobiles in most cases offer the best value proposition to the individual. Wonder why China is the largest auto market in the world? Its population is packed into large cities and rugged individualists are rounded up and shot. Rapid growth in prosperity is the driver there and elsewhere. In the 1980s and 1990s, Western Europe, despite the opening of numerous high-speed rail lines, saw vehicles per capita increase dramatically while the US, having prospered after World War II while Europe was catching up after the devastation of the war, actually experienced a ten percent decline in cars per head from 1980 to 2001 despite passenger rail alternatives going generally from bad to worse.

Fastransit gets this. Along with our freight and intracity solutions, our intercity system will bring US rail transportation into the 21st Century (which started TEN years ago), by offering passengers the ability to drive their cars onto sleds which are then whisked to their destinations while the drivers relax -- but are able to use their cars upon arrival.

This is 21st Century Transportation. We know that you love your car and aren't going to desert it just for a fast train ride. And we know that fast doesn't mean high-speed rail.