Will you be able to help states pull down some of their own silos?

….we’ve been able to move quickly and it has enabled them to move quickly. I think some of them have already done it.

They were asked to move quickly.

They were. Not only pull, a plan off the shelf, but dust it off and get it to us, everything done, Ts crossed Is dotted, done.

Is the Stimulus then a model?

The Stimulus was a harbinger. It set a very high bar for reducing red tape, reducing bureaucracy, doing things correctly, doing them by the book, but getting the money out the door.

High-speed rail is something obviously you are dedicated to.

It’s an essential partner in the integrated plan. High-speed rail is coming to America. There’s no turning back. We will not be dissuaded by two or three critics. We will not be dissuaded by two or three people. There are far more people – the majority of Americans want high-speed rail… there’s a pent-up demand in America for high-speed rail. We’re not going back. We’re on our way. Our vision, the President’s vision, connect 80 percent of America in the next 25 years. That’s half the time it took to build the interstate [system]

And building it?

We need our friends in freight rail … but we also want to take foreign investors, people who have built train sets and rail infrastructure in Europe and Asia … to invest in America: only two things – hire American workers and use American facilities.

Will it pay for itself ?

I think at this point we’re focusing more on trying to get the infrastructure in place. I’m one of those that believes if you build it they will come …This is a hard economic time right now and so it does make it difficult to always have everything paid for by the users…

Does high-speed rail create enough jobs?

Over 25 years it will create thousands and thousands of jobs…, hopefully taking some shuttered industrial plants and opening them with American workers…take laid off auto workers, a laid off steel worker, maybe give them a little retraining…