Originally Posted by dia1

Several years ago, the federal gov't (probably Transportation) offered Missouri a wonderful deal: they would pay almost all of the cost (MO would have picked up a tiny fraction of the cost and most of this could have been picked up with "in kind") to build a model high-speed rail system between St. Louis and Kansas City, with one brief stop midway in Columbia, as a demonstration project and subsidize running it for a while. (Apparently, we had the perfect spot available down the middle of I-70.) Our *illustrious* governor at the time (John Ashcroft) and the Missouri Dept. of Transportation turned it down without even giving it serious thought. Many of us here have lamented this lame-brained decision repeatedly. Never, though, more than now.