High-Speed Railroad
Your (May 4) article “High-Speed Rail Access Near Interstates Sought” describes an apparently economical method to encourage high-speed railroad construction.
The federal government itself established a precedent for this during the 19th Century by providing land grants to private-sector railroads for thousands of miles of rights of way in order to encourage railroad construction.
Unfortunately, providing a right of way along a freeway will doom a 300-m.p.h. train to operate not much faster than cars on the freeway--less than 100 m.p.h.
The same laws of physics that apply to Southern California automobiles also will apply to French, German or Japanese high-speed trains. If the high-speed train operates much faster than freeway speed on freeway-style curves and hills, the train ticket from Anaheim to Las Vegas will read “E-Ticket.”
NEIL M. JORDAN
Irvine
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