Following is part of an article printed in the Times Herald of Newnan, GA on 8-23-08.
Major rail line with Atlanta stop proposed
By Winston Skinner
The Times-Herald
More railroad lines are likely to be part of the travel pattern of Americans in the future.
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson Friday said he and U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) are proposing "another high speed rail line." Speaking to the Newnan Rotary Club at Newnan Country Club, Isakson said the proposed line would run from New York to Birmingham, with stops in Atlanta and Richmond.
Isakson -- who spent most of Friday in Newnan -- said the rail stop in Atlanta would remove an estimated 15 percent of the traffic on Interstate 85 north of Georgia's capital city.
Connecting major cities with high speed rail and smaller cities with light rail "makes sense," Isakson said.
Isakson said major changes are needed in the way railroads are financed in the United States. He said railroads need funding more like that used for highways and air travel. In those two instances, the government provides some basic infrastructure -- the road, the runway, air traffic control -- but the private sector provides the means of travel with the cost paid by users.
Isakson said he also has confidence that American ingenuity can develop new sources of energy that will go beyond helping to solve the current gasoline crisis. "Whatever we're doing now has got to be a bridge to the next source of energy," he said.
That new "source," he said, could be "a variety of sources."
He said reduced reliance on foreign oil will cause the price per barrel to drop some, but not to previous levels. "The day of $10, $20, $30 a barrel oil is over," he said.