What do I know, I just work for the railroad 🤷‍♂️. Once again I’m all for investing in rail infrastructure and expanding passenger routes, however, to call it a modest proposal for a 90 minute train ride from Burlington to Boston shows a level of ignorance in how our rail infrastructure is built in this country. The tracks just don’t go there. Also, if you were to construct new tracks from Burlington to Boston in a complete straight line, ignoring all obstacles such as private property, waterways, mountains, other infrastructure, it is a distance of 180 miles. That would require a train capable of traveling 120+ miles per hour. Amtraks Acela can travel that fast, but once again the cost to build, maintain, and operate are extraordinary and no small task. Hell, Amtrak is spending 117 billion dollars to upgrade and maintain the northeast corridor (Acela trains) over the next 15 years, and that route is already there, the rails and the signals and the sidings and the double main tracks are all already built. The cost of building a direct route capable of traveling from Burlington to Boston in 90 minutes would be hundreds of billions if not a trillion dollars and take decades to build, that is if it didn’t get hung up by act 250 and NIMBYism holing up the project left right and center. So while I would love that kind of high speed rail project in our little state, I think our money would do better to improve our existing rail network and build reliable intracity service access across Vermont.