Thanks to the work of activists, including ones in Northampton, the federal government is investing more money than ever before in making trains better. The Northampton activists have a web site at www.TrainsInTheValley.org. “We're waiting for the hopeful award of federal money to rail work between Worcester and Springfield,” one of the Northampton activists, Ben Heckscher, told the Valley Post on February 22.

Trains in Europe, Japan, South Korea, and China go 200 mph. At that speed, from Springfield to Boston would take half an hour. The average home in Boston costs about $800,000. In Springfield it's about $200,000.

In California, more than 1,000 workers are laying out tracks for the USA's first bullet train, from LA to San Francisco. On February 14, 2023 the daily newspaper in Fresno, California (population 500,000) quoted the mayor of Fresno saying, these are “good-paying jobs, livable-wage jobs, jobs that give people an opportunity to provide for their family, send their kids to college, be able to buy a home, be able to transform a family. When you know in Fresno that nearly one out of four families live at or below the poverty line, good paying jobs are more meaningful than perhaps anywhere else in the state of California.”

In December 2022, the European Commission approved France's plan to ban flights between Paris and the French cities of Nantes, Lyon, and Bordeaux. There are now nonstop commercial flights on Delta from Bradley airport, which is nine miles from Springfield, Massachusetts, to New York City's LaGuardia airport.

Amtrak could get faster between the Valley and New York City. “The states of Massachusetts and Vermont would need to offer Amtrak money to eliminate stops in Connecticut,” Bruce Becker told the Valley Post in 2019. He works for a group that has a web site at www.RailPassengers.org.

In a January 2023 in-person interview, Vermont state senator Wendy Harrison of Brattleboro told the Valley Post she will research this idea.

Info on the record high federal train funding is at:

https://railroads.dot.gov/newsroom/press-releases/biden-harris-administr...