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The slow pace of trains in the U.S. can be maddening, particularly during delays on rail sidings for an hour or more to enable freight trains - which have the right-of-way - to pass.

We are also ignoring and underfunding high speed rail which is one of the best ways to move citizens and improve congestion on our highways.

The railroads needed standardized time; as a result, the technology of train travel shaped the way everyone gets up, eats, goes to sleep, calculates age, and, perhaps of no small importance, imagine the world as a whole, ticking reliably, with reliable deviations, according to the beat of one central clock in a physical location.

Travel at faster than the speed of light certainly can have dramatic implications that are difficult to understand, such as time travel.

High-speed rail would revolutionise interstate travel and would also be an economic game-changer for dozens of regional communities along its path.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

We must go fast, because the race is against time.

I'm trying to look at many, many things in modern life that I believe are going faster, and I'm trying to look at why they're going faster and what effect they have on us. We all know about FedEx and instant pudding, but it doesn't mean we've looked at all the consequences of our desire for speed.

Time travel may be achieved one day, or it may not. But if it is, it should not require any fundamental change in world-view, at least for those who broadly share the world view I am presenting in this book.

The reality about transportation is that it's future-oriented. If we're planning for what we have, we're behind the curve.