Popular Mechanics cover story on high-speed rail

I don't have a link, but I went into CVS at lunchtime and they had the current issue of Popular Mechanics on their newsstand with the cover story "300mph trains" and a picture of a maglev train. I didn't have time to check it out properly, but could be worth a look.

I am old enough and grizzled enough now to remember the other schemes high-tech dreamers have pushed as "THE FUTURE" in public transportation, and I'm as skeptical about maglev as I am about monorails. For Goshsake's let's let somebody else do the pioneering engineering and make the mistakes we can avoid when the US FINALLY shakes off the ideological idiocies the so-called "conservatives" have foisted on the rest of us concerning public transportation.

What CAN be said of the varying high-speed rail proposals is that high-speed rail on its own right of way seems to work very well--as demonstrated in Japan, France, Germany, and now in Spain and Italy. High speed rail may use the "old-fashioned" steel (or alloy) wheels on two steel rails that they were using back in monopolists EH Harriman's and JP Morgan's day, but by gummidgy, unlike the Space Shuttle and the Osprey, it WORKS!

I admit that mag-lev does look sexierthan high-speed rail does. It looks NEW, the technology looks nice, and it's reputed to be faster. But nobody else has built a viable, working, day-in-day-out, all-weather mag-lev line. I don't see why anyone here in the US should be foolish enough to make (and pay dearly for) the engineering mistakes that WILL occurr.