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Examines the future importance of redeveloping the American rail network, both freight and passenger. While American freight transport is now unchallenged as the most efficient and cost effective in the world, the USA lags behind the rest of the advanced industrialized world in the development of a modern passenger rail network which takes advantage electrically powered trains that achieve speeds of over 150mph. The program makes a case for the economic viability and importance of new rail technology in the transportation mix of the 21st century. The argument hinges upon the capacity of such advanced technology to fit into an inter-modal structure in which high-speed trains connect large metropolitan areas that are between 250 and 350 miles apart. The program takes as its primary example a Great Lakes megapolis, which is expected to develop in the Midwest over the next four decades.