President Bush recently signed a bill that would funnel $45 million to build a high-speed maglev train between two great pillars of Americana: Disney Land and Las Vegas. The 300-mile-an-hour train would blast across the 250-mile route in less than an hour, granting upper-middle-class Americans more time to squander their retirements and kids’ college funds at both entertainment super-complexes.  

It would be the first maglev train in the U.S. and would simultaneously appease kneecap-breaking casino owners, the Disney Empire and environmentalists. But there’s a catch: Maglev trains are absurdly expensive. Japan’s 5.5-mile Linimo maglev train cost more than $380 million to build. China’s 19-mile Shanghai maglev train cost about $1.3 billion. Going off those numbers, the Disney-Vegas train would cost about $17 billion to complete.

So what does $45 million buy? An environmental study and, with any luck, something positive to say about the Bush reign.

Photo: Shanghai’s Maglev Train, from Wikipedia.

Link to Gizmodo article.