This summer I went on a mini-term trip to Japan. We spent most of our time in Tokyo, but we got to take little day trips to other cities. On our trips to Kyoto and Hiroshima, I had one of the most eye-opening and just plain awesome experiences of the entire trip: riding the bullet train.

These bullet trains, or “Shinkansen” as they’re called in Japanese, seem like something ripped from the future. They are super sleek and super long with pointed, bullet-like noses that stretch on for 25 feet. These trains leave the station at speeds that make your eyes hurt to watch.

Inside, the trains are almost just as nice, with wide aisles, big, clean bathrooms, plenty of room for luggage, and comfortable seating you would find on a plane complete with tray tables and all—only with much more leg room.

Taking off, it does not feel like you are going over 150 miles per hour. It accelerates and decelerates quickly but so smoothly that you could stand in the aisle holding onto nothing and not trip.

They are quiet, comfortable, and fancy. They are affordable and convenient. But, most importantly, they are fast, and the United States needs them badly.

There are already some long-term, foggy plans on the books right now for bullet train systems in the Midwest, Northeast, Florida, and Texas, but the posted system with the most potential is in southern California. It is a prime spot for the first American bullet train system since the area is full of the high-tech human capital needed to design the project, and it is the location of two of the biggest cities in America with the biggest traffic problems: San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Building bullet trains in California will create thousands of jobs and provide tons of revenue for the state in tourism and taxes. It will bring more people to the region and help economically depressed cities modernize and boom. Bullet trains will do wonders to help alleviate the pressure on the area’s airports and decrease traffic on the roads. But, of course, the biggest downside is starting costs.

Before all is said and done, a bullet train project in California could cost upwards of $69 billion. Only a chunk of this is needed for the first phase of the project, but a chunk of $69 billion is still a lot of billions. Luckily, this July the California Senate approved $4.7 billion to get the project started, and the state will receive $3.2 billion from President Obama’s economic stimulus package to match the state’s funds.

But anti-rail sentiment is growing. In 2008, California citizens voted with a 53% majority to earmark $10 billion in state funds for high-speed rail projects. Since then, a poll in July showed that 56% of voters would oppose allocating money for rail projects if they had the chance to vote again. This sentiment is matched in other states like Florida and Hawaii where legislators are pulling the plug on rail projects and rejecting federal funds. In California, some Democrats and most Republicans argue that building a bullet train system is wasteful and too expensive in the present economy, especially when California has had to make major cuts elsewhere in the budget.

But one of the biggest problems with American culture is that we have a hard time seeing the long-term benefits of things. Here we could learn something from the Japanese, because they have no problem investing time, energy, and money when it is obvious that the long-term benefits will outweigh costs.

If the state of California does nothing, it will cost double or triple what it would to build the bullet train system. Each year, $20 billion is lost in fuel and productivity due to gridlock, and the population is growing so it just gets worse. To keep up with demand, the state would need to build 3,000 miles of road, five airport runways, and 90 airline departure gates, costing $100 billion. At least. And that’s just to keep up with demand, not to make things any better than they are now.

With numbers like these, it is plain to see that we have no choice but to modernize our transportation infrastructure. If I could, I would ship all the opponents to Japan just so they could try the bullet trains for themselves. No one could doubt their economic potential after that. And what American doesn’t love going fast?

— Lindsay Lee is a junior in mathematics. She can be reached at [email protected].