Make no little plans

Half a century ago,a young presidential hopeful campaigned and won on the slogan lets get America moving again. Today,another young president is faced with a country listless and an economy that is facing its greatest threat since JFK was a boy in the 1930s. And he,too,wants to get America moving again literally. Last week President Obama announced a $13 billion plan to create a genuine high-speed railway network for the US.

This is long overdue,and if pulled off correctly,could indeed be a visionary change,the sort of thing that Barack Obama was elected for. Visitors to the US have remarked for years how mired in antiquity,overpriced and underperforming,is its rail system,especially when compared to Europe and Japan. (And soon,China.) Trains are the last option for travelers,even between two relatively close major cities. Only a tiny fraction of the traffic between Boston and New York,or New York and Washington,for example,travels on rails; planes and buses still do better,even though airports are far out of town and buses arent precisely quiet and comfortable. Anywhere else in the world,a stretch of four great cities in a line DC,Philadelphia,New York and Boston would have been an invitation to a profitable,much-used high-speed line. In America,that didnt happen,because of government disinterest in leaping a few hurdles. Fortunately,the growing climate-change consensus and the availability of stimulus funding might finally clear those hurdles. (The arguments are strong: reducing congestion,creating jobs,cutting carbon emissions and oil imports.)

One hurdle: the US well-known automobile fixation,which some Americans connect to notions of freedom. Another: railways dont really retain much glamour in the American public imagination. Also: itll require cooperation between federal and local governments thats as difficult there as it is in India. But Obama sold the idea with the elan of a Kennedy selling America on the moon. (Make no little plans, he said.) His deputy called Amtrak Joe for his love of trains added even more emotional depth. In India,weve already got a unified rail structure and a cultural closeness to trains. Perhaps its time the railway ministry was gifted a bit of stimulus-vision.