The new TIME explores the case for taxpayer investment in high-speed trains:

The goal is to create attractive alternatives to long drives and short flights, which would relieve road and air congestion; reduce carbon emissions, highway deaths and dependence on oil from foreign thugs or the blackened Gulf: create jobs; jump-start a new domestic manufacturing industry; and improve the competitiveness and convenience of the U.S. economy.

Does that
sound too good to be true? Randal O?Toole agrees.

He discussed why high-speed rail makes no sense for North Carolinians in a 2009 John Locke Foundation Policy Report.