What strikes me about "Derailed" is that the author admits he's been wrong in the past. How often do we hear such candor from well-known experts? Joseph Vranich, who lobbied on Capital Hill to create Amtrak, now regrets his work. He admits that Amtrak is incapable of running fast trains that are convenient to American travelers. By the time I finished with the book, I agreed with him.

Amtrak imperils its own future. The author explains that Amtrak for the most part ignores market clues about changing travel needs. Instead, Amtrak works to please members of Congress by running trains on an old-fashioned network. Amtrak's political maneuvering means the railroad is headed for higher financial losses and needs more pork-barrel money for questionable projects. Billions more in government subsidies are sure to follow the billions already spent.

But there is much here that's positive about passenger trains in the United States and around the world. Also, "Derailed" offers an imaginative ten-point plan to replace Amtrak with innovative organizations. I've never read anything quite like it. The plan also is a courageous stance for an admitted train-lover like Vranich to take.

In "Supertrains", Joseph Vranisch introduced the reader to the vital link in mass transportation taking shape in all corners of the world: high speed rail. In "Derailed", the author critically examines Amtrak, meticulously explaining how America's publicly financed passenger rail program has been an abject failure in carving out an important niche in the transportation arena as well as directly and indirectly sabotaging high speed rail programs along the way. Drawing on numerous statistics, Vranich illustrates how, with the exception of the Northeast corridor, Amtrak has done little more than provide Americans with a passenger rail service on a level only encountered in several developing nations. An early chapter also makes note that most of Amtrak's trains currently have longer schedules and endure more mechanical problems than the trains of the 1940's and 50's.

Later chapters of the book outline the success enjoyed by other rail systems that are either a private enterprise or formed by public-private partnerships: commuter rail systems such as those in Chicago and New York, the freight companies such as Burlington Northern and Conrail and the tourist trains such as the Alaska Railroad, which, since its privatization has enjoyed its greatest financial success.

The final chapters center on Vranich's arguments for the dissolution of Amtrak, a 10 step phase-out plan and his proposal for public-private partnerships in future passenger rail service as witnessed by the successful TGV in France. His convictions in this area are both passionate and highly cogent. One can only hope that the leaders of our nation will read this book and use it as a blueprint for reshaping America's transportation infrastructure.

Joseph Vranich offers more than a chronology of poor Amtrak service -- he provides convincing arguments that "We need passenger trains, but we don't need Amtrak." That viewpoint has validity as Amtrak's market share declines to its lowest level in history. In fact, more people fly on domestic airlines in two days that ride Amtrak all year.

Although "Derailed" relies a bit too much on statistics, its facts and figures justify "new thinking" about Amtrak's system, which is a throwback to the pre-jetliner, pre-Interstate highway era of the 1950s. Rigidly sticking with the past is costly as Amtrak requires higher per-passenger subsidies than do airlines and highways, suffers financial losses in the billions, and flirted with bankruptcy just last year.

The book fills an enormous void in nonfiction by outlining how nations as diverse as Argentina, Great Britain and Japan are revolutionizing railroads through privatization, devolvement to sta! te governments and liquidation. Americans assume "privatization" is code for "no subsidies," but overseas it means better trains and lower subsidies through competitive bidding for franchises. Vranich argues for a cautious Amtrak phase-out so that needed trains will remain to serve legitimate travel needs, and he would cheer if Richard Branson's Virgin Rail would take over Amtrak's Boston-Washington line.

Today's headlines reflect Vranich's themes. A new report by the U.S. General Accounting Office warns that Amtrak's financial condition remains "precarious" despite traffic increases and Washington's recent multi-billion-dollar bailout of Amtrak. We cannot ignore the advice in "Derailed," which makes sense as Amtrak continues to falter in many parts of the nation.

Joseph Vranich presents a glowing, glossy image of a New America linked together with a web of high speed, high tech, high cost SuperTrains. Unfortunately his largely anecdotal story telling has little serious thought regarding the fundamental reason why high speed rail has a very limited future in the United States. There is a reason why Europe has trains and America has planes. Europe is smaller than America. The distances are shorter. Not only does this make a tremendous difference in travel times but it also makes a huge difference in cost. Vranich completely avoids the cost issue.

Not a detail.

Each mile of track for one of his supertrains costs between $30 and $50 million. Who is going to pay for his 1000 mile network. He doesn't say.

This is a significant oversight.

Basically, SuperTrains is an excercise in nostalgic dreaming. A very nice one, with lots of nice images. But it is a very foolish book.

Ten years ago Mr. Vranich was on the cutting edge by suggesting supertrains for America. This book launched the $12 billion High-Speed Rail Act that is still pending in congress. But time has moved on. The trains of yesterday don't fit the NIMBY attitude of modern America. Future transportation will have to be clean, sustainable, safe, secure and -most of all- out of sight and sound for people living along the right-of-way. A good follow-up book will come out in April '03 called "Faster than Jet: A solution to America's long-term transportation problems."

The arguments posited by Vranich for a U.S based high speed rail network are so compelling and logically formulated that before completing the book I became a member of an organization devoted to high speed ground transportation. Topics explored include the present state of U.S. passenger railroads (focusing on Amtrak) as well as failed high speed rail initiatives , the politics of mass transportation, the problems faced by a near-saturated automobile/aircraft transportation network, the cutting edge technology in high speed rail occuring in Europe, including the imminent unveiling of magenetically levitated trains (maglev) in both Germany and Japan and a scenario of a future with high speed rail. The author's vision is left somewhat incomplete however as he neglects to explore the logistics of how a high speed rail system will link with other forms of transportation (intra-city rail and/or automated guideway transit systems, in addition to cars/airplanes?) to hopefully develop a superior transportation infrastructure to what is currently in place. Overall though, this is highly thought provoking commentary on how a mode of transportation viewed by most as outdated is in fact our best option for safer, more efficient, environmentally sound and less energy intensive mobility for the 21st century.