United States Infrastructure Saddens Me

From the New York Times:

42: The number of high-speed rail lines recently opened or set to open by 2012 in China. By contrast, the United States hopes to build its first high-speed rail line by 2014, an 84-mile route in Florida linking Tampa and Orlando. How fast are the Chinese bullet trains? They average speeds of up to 215 miles an hour. The train that connects Guangzhou, the southern coastal manufacturing center, to Wuhan, in the interior, takes a little more than three hours to travel 664 miles, roughly the distance between Boston and southern Virginia.

I could travel from NYC to Providence in under an hour. Right now, it takes me almost four.