President Joe Biden gave a speech yesterday about mass transit, specifically something about Amtrak and tunnels in New York, but nobody is really sure what the President was trying to say.
Biden started telling a tale about how Barack Obama allowed him to create a budget for Amtrak and what he said after that is completely unintelligible.
“If you think about it, when I was Vice President with Barack, he allowed me to put together a budget for Amtrak. It had money for high speed rail at 200 miles an hour from, excuse me, from Charlotte, and another line going from in Florida down to Tampa. Another line, if we had moved, Gov, we’d have that tunnel fixed in New York now. The money was there to get it done. There’s so much we can do. It’s the biggest bang for the buck we can expend,” is what rev.com’s transcript of the speech reads.
In parts of the speech that were more decipherable, Biden said his American Jobs Plan will invest $10 billion annually to rescue the flailing public mass transit service.
“In my American Jobs Plan, I proposed spending $10 billion a year on passenger rail and freight rail. Of this, two thirds would support existing Amtrak routes, including the Northeast Corridor, but nationwide. We’re talking about union jobs, as I said,” Biden said. “We’re taking care of the riders, lane track, wiring switches, fixing bridges, tunnels, modernizing stations, and repairing and rebuilding this vital infrastructure. This would allow for the potential to expand passenger rail service. Imagine a two-hour train ride between Atlanta and Charlotte going in speeds of 220 miles an hour, a two and a half-hour trip between Chicago and Detroit or faster and more regular trips between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, a route that I imagine could be pretty popular on Fridays.”