The Texas and Los Vegas ideas are decades old. By now, everyone knows why they will fail again. Some of the other ideas are the purest moonshine. The “79-mph” train to Chicago is really nothing but an addition to Amtrak service.

There are corridors being considered. In California they’ve gone a long way, and, given the abject failure of Washington State DOT to take advantage of the stimulus spending, probably the best thing Obama could do is put the whole $8 billion into the California project. The NEC is probably another corridor that could put people to work now and stimulate the economy while upgrading rail speeds.

A ten year old child could have seen that, with a Democratic President, two Democratic Senators, a Democratic majority in the House, and a Democratic governor, Washington State would almost be assured a generous dollop of stimulus. So WSDOT panicked, pulled in the ‘welcome’ mat, hung up a ‘closed’ sign on the door, and turned out the lights. It’s at moments like this that you get some real insight into what they’re thinking in Olympia.

It would seem fair to say that Americans have a very hazy idea of what light rail is or what it can do. Governor Rendell, of Pennsylvania, for example, would hardly be my go-to guy for expertise- at least, not until he hit it out of the park with the suggestion that we ban air travel under 500 miles. Thats a pretty concise statement of what we’re trying to do, where we can go, and what the benefits would be.

The long-term action will come from think-tanks, coalitions, regional coalitions concerned with land-use planning, efforts to cut carbon emissions, and so forth, to a perhaps surprising development- SNCF, for example says, for example, that ideally two large cities are 600-930 miles apart for HSR, and that they would be interested in building it here.

In the big picture, Obama’s $8 billion is about the same as a new player putting a $5 chip on the table- an attention getter, as you say, but not yet a game-changer.