In keeping with my last post about variety in transportation, it's fitting that I write this while traveling at over 170mph on a high speed AVE train in Spain. I'll be in Sevilla less than 2 1/2 hours after leaving Madrid - a distance of more than 300 miles or roughly the same as traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Doing the latter would take about 6 hours in a car, or 1 hour and 15 minutes by plane - and with airport hassles, the door to door time by plane would be about the same as this miraculous train I'm riding on. Throw in a nicer seats, a cafe car and the freedom to roam about, and the train is a no brainer in terms of anyone's preference.It's also arguably a great deal greener than either of the other two methods of travel. The train is electric and has no emissions at all. It takes up far less space on the ground than airports and highways, and travels strait into downtown areas without encouraging suburban sprawl. Obviously its power comes from somewhere but even if the train's power were derived 100% from coal it still works out as more efficient than the other two options in terms of pollutants emitted. Why is it that nothing like this exists in the United States? Excellent high and medium speed trains are available almost everywhere in Europe and Japan. Granted the Acela Amtrak service on the east coast comes close, but is still a far cry from France's TGV or the Japanese Shinkansen.The answer is twofold: Massive infrastructure costs, and historic neglect. In the case of Acela (the high speed Amtrak service from Washington to Boston), the track is too curvy for the train to stay at full speed for very long. Straightening the track would require an eminent domain adventure of epic proportions. Elsewhere in the country, there are less expensive potential routes such as San Francisco to Los Angeles, the so-called Texas Triangle, and spurs radiating from Chicago. Saying these are less expensive still means they'll cost billions to upgrade to high speed, but every year spent doing nothing means the price tag only rises. Almost any two cities that are less than 350 miles apart have a golden opportunity to build high speed rail that will make train travel easier and faster than flying or driving. Despite the high cost of such projects, they would improve economies by making transportation easier, free up space at congested airports for longer trips, improve transportation security by offering more options, and cut our fossil fuel consumption and pollutants measurably. The United States has ignored inter city train travel for so long that the country is in a costly pickle, but only by starting projects now will we prevent this needed improvement from costing even more. It's time to bite the bullet on this one and get train travel, ahem, back on track - another solution that can be arrived at today, using existing technology, to buy us time to develop the needed innovation to truly rid ourselves of fossil fuel dependencies.

Getting ourselves out of our fossil fuel pickle is going to require some significant changes in the way we drive and otherwise get around. Electric & hydrogen vehicles may be the winners in automobile design (provided we can guarantee a safe and clean method of producing the electricity and H2).But one often overlooked piece of the puzzle is the need to diversify the transportation options available to people, a change which has more to do with how we design our neighborhoods and cities than with designing better cars.In most of the United States, you might literally starve to death without access to a car, regardless of what kind of fuel it runs on. In addition to the obvious environental and asthetic trouble this puts the country in, it's a national security concern, not to mention an economic hardship for those with low levels of income as well as a health concern (no walking = fat people).Designing neighborhoods so that it is possible to walk or bike some of the time makes life a lot easier for people and gives them the opportunity to avoid the stress of parking and gridlock with a simple, healthy walk to the store. You might even be able to avoid a gym membership by biking to work. As long as we centralize most commerce in downtown areas (another good idea), commuter trains, with train stations in walkable neighborhoods can give the majority of people an alternative to a stressful driving commute.Europeans may be nodding their heads in aggreement, being already accustomed to such things.Before I start sounding too "anti-car" note that despite Europe's vastly superior variety in infrastructure, per capita car ownership is practically the same as the United States (see here for data)In other words, giving people more options is no threat whatsoever to automobile companies. In fact, a healthier, less stressed consumer base can only help the economy and the companies that depend on it.These sorts of changes are simple and low-tech. They also buy time for us to make the larger technological progress needed to improve our fleet of vehicles.Although I can't get enough of awesome innovations like the Tesla and the h2 bmw, I'd be happy in the short term if people kept driving old gasoline cars as long as they just didn't drive them so darn much.

Nick Aster is Chief Media Architect/CTO for TreeHugger.com, and built TreeHugger with Graham Hill in late 2004. He's responsible for all the fancy bells and whistles you see on www.treehugger.com as well as coming up with creative strategies. Nick is a long time blogger and blog consultant with a great deal of interest in environmental matters. He has an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio School of Management in San Francisco.We met him during the L.A. Motor Show.
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