A recent New York Times article highlighted the recent success of Spain’s new high-speed rail.  It was opened to the public in 2008 for travel between Madrid and Barcelona and is now becoming more popular than air travel due to its comparable price and significantly shorter wait time.  The train generates only one quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions per passenger that plane or automobile travel does over the same distance and is an important step toward Spain meeting the European Union’s standard for carbon dioxide emission reduction in the next decade.

The article goes on to describe similar steps being taken in America, President Obama’s stimulus package being the main impetus.  The stimulus package apportions $8 billion of federal money to high-speed rail projects, specifically in California, Florida and Illinois.  California voted in favor of a high-speed rail in 2008 (Proposition 1A) and was allotted $2.25 billion in 2010 for the project.  The railway will connect San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego, and should provide cheap, fast and green travel throughout the state by about 2020.