By: Matthew Bailey

Barack Obama and the U.S. government are looking to develop a national high speed railway system for personal travel. He said building this system of high speed rail transportation for the public will make traveling faster cheaper, and create 10,000 new jobs.

“My high-speed rail proposal will lead to innovations that change the way we travel in America,” Obama said.

The President wants to the current railway system will be updated existing passenger rail lines and initial steps for development of the high speed railway projects. The proposal lists the long planned rail corridor from Los Angeles to San Francisco as one that could receive funding, as well as a network featuring Chicago as the hub of a system reaching to cities like Minneapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis and St. Louis. A total of ten rail corridors were designated as potential recipients in today’s announcement. States or groups of states can apply for the funding beginning in June, but the Department of Transportation will not start awarding grants for planning and construction until this summer.

The plans are fantastic. I hope that they succeed. It seems as though President Obama is doing his very best to straiten the economy out. Setting up jobs like this could spark a trend in employment rates. Then again, it could be a failure.