One of the joys of working the tech angles on an international news program is that it can really help keep things in perspective. For example, I was putting together the latest episode of my weekly technology podcast for PRI's The World this morning. It dovetails nicely with Discovery's Wide Angle on High-Speed Rail. We've been looking for ways to cover the Obama Administration's plan to use eight billion dollars in stimulus money to start building out a high-speed rail system for the United States (you can read details here, and see a map here). Naturally, there are plenty of international models out there that the United States could look to. There's Japan and the shinkansen, and of course European countries have built out extensive systems. We ended up looking into the European angle, with a report from France. So, naturally I'd give you a picture like this, of France's high-speed TGV.
But the whole discussion of high-tech, high-speed trains put me in mind of a piece I ran on the tech podcast a couple of years ago. I vaguely remembered it -- something about Cambodians constructing their own railway. I went back and looked it up: Battambang's Bamboo Railway. I always find it helpful to keep stories like this in mind when we're spending lots of time, energy and pixels on high-speed rail. By Cambodia's standards, even the Amtrak regional trains would be wicked fast. Here's a video I found of the bamboo railway:
Here's the first part of this week's podcast. Compare and contrast for yourself. You can download it, or listen on the player right here:
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