 An artist’s rendering of the high-speed rail system under construction in California. The trains will connect Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours. Assistant professor Kari Watkins talked about the possibility of such bullet trains in Georgia on GPB’s On Second Thought May 27. (Photo Courtesy of California High-Speed Rail Authority.) |
Plans to connect Atlanta to Chattanooga or Savannah or Charlotte via high-speed trains have been discussed for years, but no tangible progress has been made on any of those linkages.
Chattanooga’s mayor said recently the proposed line to his city likely won’t get the funding it needs from the federal government and is probably dead.
On GPB’s On Second Thought May 27, assistant professor Kari Watkins said Georgia needs the political will to invest in building bullet trains before the high-speed links will happen in the state. And that’s the hardest part.
“A lot of things have to fall in place,” she told host Celeste Headlee. “Funding has to be available, both from the federal government as well as locally. We sort of have to decide that this is the direction that we’re going to go.”
Listen to the full segment featuring Watkins below: