Saturday, July 19, 2008

$4.00 gas?!?!? i'll take the train

This is in no way an original thought, in fact, I heard it from my boss at AD Carpet Care who's about as far on the Right of the political spectrum as one can possibly be.

Today we're struggling with a couple of issues when it comes to transportation. First, we have an energy crisis, as we're locked into a bidding war over oil. We're competing with Asia, the fastest growing part of the world, for oil. Thus prices are going up. Second, we're dealing with our carbon footprint (aka: how much we are polluting). The problem with our energy situation is the vast majority of our energy comes from elements that are polluting the air.

What if we created a train system that went in the median of the interstate highways? What if in the tracks were solar panels? We'd have the ability to power the trains, plus many of the areas near the tracks. We would be able to use the routes already established (they were designed to be the quickest route between the major cities anyway). 

I know that there are many issues with this idea, but it is an interesting concept. What do you think? Do you think that a transit system like this would have any hope of working?

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