I’m a rail fan. I’ve ridden the Iron Rooster all over China, traveled mostly on rail from Beijing to Wales, and even subjected my family to a few Amtrak trips.

The Acela is the only true high-speed train in the United States

So you can imagine how I drooled when President Obama started to talk about the stimulus package investing in America’s infrastructure. If anything needs funding in this country, I figured, it’s projects like California‘s long-dreamed-of bullet train that would race from San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than 3 hours.

I mean, if the Japanese and French get to go 300 miles per hour on magnetic levitating trains, why can’t we? Given the chance to get from A to B in a timely fashion without driving dangerous freeways or suffering through airport security, it seems like most Americans would ride high-speed trains. And providing a practical alternative to driving is the one thing that truly stands in the way of cutting the carbon emmissions that are destroying our planet.

All these years, local governments have lacked the start-up funds to get these high-tech locomotion systems started. Now, I thought, is finally high-speed rail’s big moment.

But when the stimulus bill passed, I heard surprisingly little about high-speed trains. I put my hopes aside until I heard Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal mock a planned Las Vegas to Disneyland train in his rebuttal to President Obama’s speech this week. I thought, “Wow, what a fabulous idea! Think of the tourism dollars that will bring in!”

Then I eagerly looked for more information on what kind of great rail projects the stimulus bill would pay for. And was quickly disappointed: The final package included only $9.3 billion for rail, and some of that will go to much-needed maintenance just to get American train travel back to where it was a few decades ago.

Nine billion dollars may sound like a lot, until you hear that California’s project alone, which would produce a train that could go over 200 miles an hour, would cost $45 billion.

Which leaves me singing the kind of blues inspired by the sounds of lonely train whistles. Instead of propping up the auto industry (and let’s hope we don’t end up doing the same for the airline industry) so they can continue enabling us to foul the planet, I wish we could put every penny of those bailout checks into high-speed rail.

Photo by Gilliamhome, used vie Creative Commons license.