Would Trains Be Beneficial to Americans?

Would Trains be Beneficial to Americans?

Around the Northern Hemisphere High Speed Trains are appearing as a means of transportation. High Speed Trains are replacing cars, planes, and the occasional boat as a convenient way to travel. The TGV in France and the Eurostar connecting the UK to Europe via rail are used widely by Europeans instead of planes, cars, and boats. In Japan, the Shinkansen connects Tokyo to all other major cities and islands. The High Speed Trains of the world are used heavily by the public and tourists alike, where available. At up to 250 miles per hour (Samuelson) High Speed Rail is extremely quick alternatives to cars. In Canada, France, England, Germany, Japan, China, South Korea, Spain, and Italy, High Speed Trains are used to connect people to surrounding areas in an extraordinarily quick manner, but not in America (CQ Researcher 399).

Trains have been evolving in a remarkably fast way in the last five centuries. Modern Rail Roads evolved from wagon ways, horse drawn wagon or carts on wooden rails, which began to appear in Germany by 1550 (Bellis). The beginning forms of the trains were pulled by horses, rope, or even left for gravity to handle (Wikipedia, Trains). Wagon ways continued to operate on wooden tracks and wheels until 1776 when the tracks and the wheels began to be made out of iron (Bellis). The new form of trains was called Tramways. In 1803, Richard Trevithic of England built the first steam engine tramway, to be known as the Locomotive (Bellis). In America, John Stevens is credited with the first steam engine locomotive in America (Bellis). Julius Griffiths, from England, was the first to patent a passenger locomotive in 1821 (Bellis). By the early nineteenth century, almost all trains were steam powered locomotives (Wikipedia). Throughout the nineteenth interest in travel by train continued to grow around the world. The Shinkansen in Japan, which can reach over 260 miles an hour, was put into service in 1964 (CQ Researcher 410). Today, the TGV (Train Grande Vitesse) in France can reach 574.8 kilometers in an hour (Wikipedia). Trains would make an extremely good invest to American society, and the evolution of American travel.

In America the idea of a High Speed Train connecting major cities like Boston and New York or San Francisco and Los Angeles, has been toyed with for decades by the American Government, but has never actually been committed to happening. The cost, at forty-five billion dollars for a train in California would affect not only California, but the rest of the Unites States of America (CQ Researcher 401). Out of the 2010 Stimulus Package, billion Dollars would go to making traditional commuter trains run faster and to the planning of Future High Speed Trains in America (CQ Researcher 339 and 410). Two and one-fourth billion dollars would go to California to use as a small installment for their forty- five billion dollar