Dear Secretary LaHood

I am a great admirer of your dedication to building high-speed rail in America. I am presently completing a pleasant train trip today which started in Oakland, CA and took me to stops in Denver, Chicago, Detroit/Windsor, Toronto, Québec City, and Montréal via Amtrak and Via Rail. Sadly, today's final leg of the trip from Montréal to Boston must be completed by Greyhound Bus because no direct or even same-day train service exists between these two large cities that are separated by a mere 300 miles. I spent the first half of the trip reading a year 2000 report on the possibilities of high speed rail along the corridor. I learned that the trip could be made in a modest five to six hours with non-high-speed rail speeds of up to 90 mph. I personally think that true high-speed rail along a straightened right-of-way would make more long-term sense, but a 90 mph train would be a great improvement over the current no train configuration. It is ironic that after making direct train connections between all the previous stops on my journey, with the exception of an odd missing link between Detroit and Windsor, that I should be forced to take a bus between Canada's largest city and Boston. Boston is a large metropolitan area with a fairly fast train connection to New York City and Washington DC, so a high speed connection that linked Montréal to Washington DC via Boston and New York would make sense.

Now as we chug out of Burlington Vermont's airport Greyhound station (there is sadly no downtown station,) I am 3 hours into a 6 1/2 hour bus ride that cost nearly seventy dollars. The bus is fairly new and features intermittent wi-fi, a restroom, power outlets and a couple well-timed half-hour layovers so you can get a meal from the world's worst restaurant at the Burlington Airport and perhaps something better in White River Junction. Next time I will probably take the 11 hour train ride to New York, spend the night, and train to Boston the next day. Or more likely I will be forced to drive or fly because I have few friends as patient as the current one with whom I travel.

Having left Burlington's airport ten minutes ago, I see that we have returned to the airport to gather a late passenger. This was certainly a kind gesture on the part of Greyhound. I suppose a train wouldn't back up to pick someone up, but maybe that's for the benefit of everyone else on board. Probably the best solution is to create a more popular service with more frequency. Some train stations are poorly situated outside of downtown, but most are, thanks to our railroad history, in convenient downtown locations. There's naturally a compromise to be made when choosing between an airport and downtown train station, but I think defaulting to downtown and providing local transit to the airport makes more sense for the town's economy and land use patterns.

I won't say anything more about my Greyhound trip--my first ever--except to say that it's sad to try to travel responsibly and get stuck with a bus on a route that was previously covered by train service (until the 1960s.) I understand that funding high-speed rail must be incremental if it is to happen at all in this country. After all, with widespread Republican hatred of trains and government infrastructure spending (yourself excluded of course) it's lucky that we fund any rail at all. It would be reckless to fund high-speed rail in parallel nationwide, à la Interstate Highway System, so that the system could be widespread before 2050.

Sincerely,
Andy Likuski