Reinventing the train: Ideas coming down the track

[hunter]

1. We don't need faster trains so much as longer vacations.

The journey ought to be part of the experience.

If I was emperor of the earth I'd ban air travel except for dire emergencies, but then I'd allow people a few extra weeks to travel, two month vacations a year, year long vacations a decade. My impossible utopia...

But electric high speed trains are an excellent compromise because, unlike airliners, they don't require fossil fuels. Put solar panels and wind generators along the railroad right-of-ways and the energy that powers them might be entirely renewable.