Planning a Nationwide High Speed Rail Freight and Passenger Network

Planning for high speed rail networks is better done at the national level when considering widespread public benefits of these networks, and is essential when dealing with institutional issues that are national in scale. Incremental improvements to the nation's extensive resource of existing railways offers hope for early benefits of high speed rail, with speeds initially up to 125 mph, while keeping options open for adding new links at much higher speed, and for emerging technologies like maglev. A 35,000 to 45,000 mile high speed rail freight and passenger network could be brought into being within a three to five year period, through a national initiative that considered the nation's freight and passenger railways as a unit.