The Long Crisis

China has already spent about $50 billion dollars on a planned $300 billion dollar bullet train system. The first leg of the high speed system will reduce the travel time from Beijing to Shanghai from about ten hours to four hours.

In the US President Obama has expressed his desire for the construction of a high speed train system but so far few concrete steps have been taken to advance the proposed project. Currently the United States is one of the few developed nations in the world that is without any high speed train systems. High speed within the US train system is about 80 miles an hour and that speed can be reached on only a very small part of existing tracks. Just how far the US is behind is illustrated by looking at Japan where bullet trains that can easily exceed 200 MPH have been in use for over 40 years.

The US needs to quickly repair its rail system. As the price of crude oil advances beyond the $70-75 a barrel range airlines begin to come under considerable stress. Moving cargo and people by train is by far a more economical solution to what is likely to become severe transportation problems in moving goods and people over the large land mass of the US.

At above $100 a barrel for crude oil the airlines will begin to virtually fall out of the sky as financial losses increase to critical levels. As gasoline and diesel fuel increases to say over $5.00 a gallon, the cost of automobile travel, and more importantly transportation of goods by truck, will once again begin to seriously impact the economy.

The US effort to improve its rail system does not have to be to build a high speed system. Probably the decline in the US financial position makes it already too late to build an expensive high tech rail system in the US. However, the need to improve the railroad system in the US should be a high priority item for team Obama.

Unfortunately, with the Obama plate already overflowing this important matter will probably not be advanced until it is too late. The fate of the US seems to be a train wreck that is going to happen no matter what we attempt to do from here forward.

The empire has pushed beyond its limits in the creation of debt and entitlements and will likely find that over the next twenty years or so China and other forward looking nations will have raced beyond the United States in transportation systems and in the quality of life for many of its citizens.

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