Its not exactly high-speed rail, but, unlike Becker’s state, mine is adding rail service — Richmond-DC and Lynchburg-Charlottesville-DC, which should allow me to realize my dream of living in the Fan District and commuting to DC. Which isn’t to disagree at all with what Stephen noted — there is a real problem in the disconnect between Obama’s rhetoric on rail and his action on rail

Side note: a bit of context in that ABCNews story would be nice — while eight billion dollars sounds like a grand investment in high speed rail and unfortunately really does qualify as “the biggest commitment of its kind ever made by the federal government”, it also isn’t enough to build any one of the currently proposed lines in California (which has the most advanced plans) and doesn’t look particularly impressive in the context of routes under construction worldwide.  Which isn’t to say that its awful — it is far better than nothing — but only that excitement ought to be tempered by the realization that this is only a first step.

[Virginia intercity rail story via Daniel Nairn]