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PRZOOM - /newswire/ -
Arlington Heights, IL, United States, 2007/04/04 - As an advanced French train tops 350 MPH to break a world record, America's commercial planes still only average less than 70 MPH, door to door, for regional flights.
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The United States' reliance on aircraft for mass 'public' transportation leaves America with one of the worst transportation systems in the industrialized nations, as delays, performance and incompetence show.
Commercial aviation is also one of the most vulnerable modes of transportation and it is not sustainable at even the current growth pattern, let alone the predicted massive growth of flights. This is mainly because of its reliance on oil for the next several decades, until new technology is developed and tested. Another factor, is because of the United States reliance on foreign oil. This is also complicated by the predicated massive air cargo expansion due to the 2008 economic globalization treaties and developing nations competing for the same oil supply.
Independent government reports state that expanding existing airports will do nothing to help relieve our long-term transportation needs (except incurring just more of the same problems) but yet, high-speed rail would.
In fact, one United States Government Accounting Office Report to Congress states, not to expand old existing airports but to use the resources to build a national high-speed rail system (GAO-02-185). That would substantially reduce the congestion on our roadways and in our skies.
"So, how come we don't have it?" asks, Jack Saporito, president of the American Working Group for National Policy, “The short answer is because of the politics of each protecting their turf. The airlines do not want competition, as in other countries and the airports are generally locally government owned and, they do not want competition either.”
The cost of building high-speed rail is one defense scheme that the air transport industry likes to throw out in its defense. Yet, how much money is really being given to the privately owned air transport industry each year from local, state and federal taxes?
"High speed rail is a viable alternative to the horrible, unsustainable system that we have now and will be even more so in the future," states Saporito.
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