Given enough money, sure, anything can happen. Look at the FEC line to Key West for an example of that.
Your comment about I-70 leads to a discussion we've never had here...what will happen when the interstates go the way of the railroads? It almost certainly will happen. Will they become highway-trails? Or will rails go back in?
You know, maybe I'm too "closed-minded" for this discussion, but I don't forsee flying cars being the huge future, at least, not without some kind of ground-based system to back it up. too many more variables that can go wrong when everyone becomes a pilot. I'd like to say that mass transit as a whole, plane, train, boat, what-have-you all intigrates. Something along the line of multi-modal automobiles that travel in various convoys. Its too bad Auto-Train didn't cath on, or maybe its too far ahead of its time. I'd love to be able to have my car after I travel somewhere.
Personally, I think what'll kill the interstates won't be an obsoleteness, it'll be an inability to absorb the demand. Think out it, in order for them to build two more lanes that are needed NOW, they have to take out one lane at least as a work zone. Byt the time they're done, they have three lanes open, one again and two new, but in the meantime the demand that already filled the old lane has also swelled up with the demand for the two new ones. And it'll be time to build two more lanes. I think that cycle will be the death of it. Maybe not anytime soon, but eventually...
As to the trains, I don't think they went anywhere. And maybe I'm too close-minded for this topic, but my personal favorite way to describe what happened to the railroads is that for the most part, they optimized. Cut back some, improved in othe rplaces. They're not gone though, they're doing what a good Tech Department does on Broadway: They keep the world moving, but they do it without really being seen or felt by the average person. (And for those of you who are techies, you know you sit there douring a show admiring the scene changes as much as the acting. Don't try to deny.)
he reason I brought up the interstate scenario is because California's already done it. They just put a high speed line down the median of an interstate a few years ago. I'm not talking about the interstates being obsolete. I'm just saying that there is so much space around a highway (I-70 in particular) that if they were to build a high speed line anywhere, it would be the most practical place. It's also a good way to get people out of their cars, and onto a train because the majority of drivers are on I-70 anyway and would see the train going by them and think, "Hey! That might be cheaper than using all this gas!"
I've always dreamed of seeing the Panhandle restored but if the idea is to get everyday people to ride the train instead of drive, (whether it be to use less gas, put out less polution, or just get there faster) I would think they would put it along the interstate. It may not be what we railfans want, but it would at least be something.
South Shore does it too in Chicago. Even has entire train stations in the middle.
what would replace the highways? And is there more information about that key west line? Im curious now. Also sorry I did not mean to sound rude. Its just a dream of mine.
You weren't being rude. And I'm sorry if I was too. I'm all for dreaming, a;though part of me thinks we'll se saying "Cool!" if they built it, and then be sick of seeing the same old' CSX engines we see everyday on the already existing tracks by Week 2. Watch the Kokomo evolution and see how long the awesomeness of that particular line lasts before it becomes just another branchline to railfan. We'll just agree to disagree on whether it'll actually happen, but hey, I wouldn't mind being wrong.
Sadly though, its ofthen the case that a pessemist is a realist no one wants to believe. Or, as was heard in a cemetary somewhere: "Gee, I guess Fred was right. They really were out to get him."
