Want More Trains...

Once I rode Amtrak from Denver to Seattle and did nothing but play poker for Skittles the whole time, for what I assumed were imaginary denominations (purple ones were worth a buck). I won like crazy, and would you believe it? At the end of the trip, the other three players paid up. I sure was glad I hadn't lost, because I wouldn't have been able to make good.

Why am I thinking about this? Because of the surprising amount of mass-transit and high-speed rail funding in the stimulus. From the Federal Railroad Administration, via Matthew Yglesias and the Huffington Post, this map of high-speed rail corriors:



It's not perfect (Houston-Dallas? LA-Vegas? Other commenters have pointed out these and other no-brainers), but man is it better than what we've got now. This is one part of the stimulus I'm really rooting for in the execution phase. I wanna ride more trains.