You will of course point out that they’re mostly in third-world countries, and it doesn’t reflect what we should do in the US. Well, your gobbledegook about “5 percent” was just as irrelevant; the large percentage of the US population living in rural areas don’t use trains much, but that’s quite irrelevant to people in a big city like Atlanta, who need them.

To follow your illogic, the vast majority of the US population doesn’t live in Atlanta, therefore no project for Atlanta is worthwhile. Clearly this is just wrong.

To the other right-wingers, remember: roads lose money faster than railroads. Just look at highway budgets, substantially funded from income, sales, and property taxes…. as soon as all the roads become toll roads, railroads will make a profit moving people, guaranteed.

The Georgia legislature was never run by Democrats nor is it now run by Republicans. Georgia is run by Opportunists who, when given power by the befuddled electorate, want to maintain that power at any cost. I applaud Secretary of Transportation LaHood for traveling to Georgia & using his metaphorical 2×4 to get the attention of our Opportunist mules under the gold dome.

Sure would be nice if you used that in context. Try reading up on why Ga is that low and how high they would be if we were to compare apples to apples.

Virginia and North Carolina both have taken the initiative to provide inter-city commuter rail service, which is very popular in both states. So they are likey to get help in upgrading their tracks which will allow a higher level of service (ie, faster trains). This help will probably come in the form of extending the Northeast high-speed rail corridor from DC to Charlotte.

Sonny and his pals (including the two Senators) are still talking about proposals that were on the table 8 years ago. So the corridor probably won’t be extended into Georgia.

So – Charlotte and Raleigh and Richmond are connected to the population centers of the Northeast (Boston, Phil, NYC, DC). Atlanta is not.

What do you think that will mean?

In Georgia, I estimate that while pregnant women are right at the top of the list, less than 5% of them will actually show up to get H1N1 vaccinations, because Georgia is always at the bottom of the list when vaccines are recommended for pregnant women, becuase well…they’re never higher than 47th in the SATs and there is only a tepid campaign to encourage them in the state that is the home of the CDC and the CDC only has a tepid campaign to encourage them as well.

What you’ll have soon are schools closing out the wazoo and businesses shutting down as people stay home in fear.