Seattle-based Grist, responding to Obama's State of the Union speech---in which the President vowed simultaneously to "give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail" within 25 years and to freeze government spending for five years---notes that "High-speed rail networks do not materialize with the snap of a finger or the uttering of words, no matter how inspiring."

In other words, high-speed rail isn't going to build itself.

Obama's own refusal to push for dramatically more funding could be devastating to high-speed U.S. rail. Let's look at the California project the president referred to. According to Wired, building out a high-speed line linking San Francisco and L.A. would cost about $42 billion. ... So far, the federal government (under Obama's stimulus plan) has committed $2.3 billion, and California voters coughed up another $10 billion by voting for a bond issue. So that's $12.3 billion of the $42 billion necessary.

What about the rest? "The state is confident it will line up more federal funding and $12 billion in private investment," Wired reports. Even if that optimistic scenario plays out, California's high-speed rail network stands about 40 percent short of its necessary funding. As we speak, it's a high-speed train to nowhere. And if the idea can't take wing in California, it's almost certainly doomed nationwide. Don't sell your car.

And it's not as if Congress was salivating to build rail in the first place. In fact, their idea of "infrastructure" is pretty much limited to---you guessed it---highways. Just this week, Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee's top Republican, James Inhofe, said any big infrastructure would have to be mostly highways to get Republican support---to "confine it to maintenance, new construction, bridges, highways then that would be sellable to the conservative community”--- a proposal that prompted a barrage of mocking rhetoric about bike lanes.

We've got a long way to go to "win the future," to use Obama's odd turn of phrase.