This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 12, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

President Obama is pinning his transportation plan on a national network of what he is calling high-speed

rail.

Cato Institute's senior fellow Randall O'Toole believes the president's plan is nothing

like the high-speed rail projects in Japan. At best he says it's moderate-speed rail and at worst

he says it's a multi-billion dollar subsidy to a wealthy elite paid for by the rest of us.

Well, he's decided that his signature issue is going to be high-speed rail. And unfortunately, there's some confusion about this because there's really two kinds of high speed rail.

There's the bullet trains of Japan and the T. G. V. of France that go 200 miles an hour.

That's what a lot of people think of as high speed rail.

Really what Obama is thinking of is moderate speed rail.

Trains that go on existing freight tracks at about 90 to 110 miles an hour.

That's faster than driving, but it's not especially fast.

You can't compete against airplanes, and you really can't compete against driving because the

trains don't go from door to door.

The French and Japanese high speed rail trains are all built on exclusive rights of way.

They don't mix with freight, they don't mix with low speed

passenger trains. What Obama wants is to take existing rail lines and beef them up

just a little bit and run trains at moderate speeds.

That's okay, except if you want real high speed rail,

then it's going to cost 10 times as much

to build brand new tracks that go 200 miles an hour or so.

...