THE OBAMA PLAN LAUNCHES THE CHALLENGE TRACK VS CAR AND AIRPLANES

In 2000, another year of crisis for Wall street, presenting to Bush the 'Positive train control "for their integration and modernization, the Lockheed Martin called the American Railway" a sleeping giant "whose awakening would have encouraged the revival of' economy.

Bush did nothing.

But nine years later, his successor, Obama, the giant has awakened with the announcement that the state will invest 13 billion dollars in high-speed trains, an almost complete news for America, 8 billion immediately, the other 5 in five years. "We need an intelligent transport system suited to the needs of the twenty-first century," Obama said in a veiled criticism of the uncontrolled passion of Americans for the car and the airplane. "We have to put up with Asia and Europe, far ahead of us in this field. Trains are the means of transport may be more efficient, not clogged traffic and not pollute the environment. "

The awakening of the sleeping giant is part of the plan for the energy revolution of Obama, who wants to reduce dependence of foreign petroleum and go little by little from petrol cars to electric (He made a ordered of 2500 electric cars in Detroit for the government) . He also decided to create thousands of jobs and attract massive private investment in railways. The funds for high-speed trains, "to which I envy," Obama said earlier this month in a speech to students in Europe in Strasbourg, from 787 billion will be allocated to him moving again. Obama has already mapped corridors thousand kilometers long, on average, where the trains will run at over 250 km per hour. Beginning in 2012 - except hitches - the three most important link San Francisco to San Diego in California, New England to Florida on the East Coast and various parts of the Mid west. Like Lincoln, who more than half a century ago did expanded the network to unify America and increase productivity, Obama, who has said on several occasions, pointing to it "to change the way we travel for business or do tourism, and to save energy, time and money. "

The models will be France and Spain in Europe, and China and Japan in Asia. According to the White House, the choice of the President will not affect its decision to save the U.S. industry. Just as well for trains and for cars, said a spokesman, Obama wants that 'make life better for our children. " To the critics of Obama, the oil giants in the first place, they see their monopoly eroded, is a step backwards. In reality, it is an important step forward, and Wall Street has confirmed: on the stock exchange, shares in the railways are among the few that rise. To them, moreover, access to high technology was a matter of life or death. The United States has 240 thousand km of tracks on which to runs each year almost 2 and a half billion tons of goods. The companies that are managing it are 650, many of which are in need of renewal. And the passenger sector, that is in the hand of the Amtrak, was likely to become the Cinderella of transport.

In 2008, on the Americans trains traveled less than 35 million people, up from 600 million on airline: 0.6 percent of travelers, including those on cars. The economist Robert Reich, a former minister in the Clinton administration, argues that the advent of high speed trains' will mark the renaissance of the railways. " The Amtrak, whose full name is National railroad passengers corporation and has a network of 35 thousand km, with nearly 500 destinations in 46 of the 50 states, provides a real boom. In 2008 he recorded the usual deficit, 2 and a half billion dollars in cash to nearly 3 billion and a half of charges, and was saved with the usual allowance of the state. But it is certain that the supertreni will become part of the American dream and attract foreign visitors. Reich is in agreement: "There will be no better way to see America in all its glory."