You raise a very good point in your post. With the financial crisis comes the increasing difficulty of financing any alternatives to our present collapsing transportation system. The astronomical amounts of capital (hundreds of billions) needed to upgrade existing rail lines, build new transit and high speed lines are going to be ever more difficult to obtain from any source. We could have placed realistic taxes on fuels years ago to finance alternatives and reduce demand, but the happy motoring public, while it always was willing to pay the increased price of the fuel, never could see beyond next fillup. And, with no political leadership what we have is increasing chaos.