Once upon a time, Kentucky’s sole Amtrak line, the Cardinal, provided slow and costly rail transportation to people who preferred to drive alone, thought trains were for the birds, and voted for Anne “Fuck Trains” Northup.

Since we’ve been without passenger rail service, the country has experienced price shocks in the per barrel cost of crude oil not unlike those that occurred during the ’70s, which prompted President Carter to install solar panels on the White House that were thirty years ahead of style. And more people than ever are, ahem, jumping aboard the ‘train’ train and willing to consider options beyond four-wheel-drive.

In large part, the Cardinal’s undoing had more to do with the vast subsidies granted to the Oil & Asphalt lobbies and asinine rail-speed restrictions than any fundamental problem with trains: Who wants to take a trip to Cincinnati riding 40 miles an hour? Did we mention the trains were filled with HOBOS? And that GAY EUROTRASH ride them all the time over in GAY PARIS because their government doesn’t pit roads and rails against one another, like we do here?

The political climate that had for generations favored this mentality and the gas-guzzling, American-made dinosaur has now yielded (under Premier Obama’s watch) to the vanguard of terrestrial transportation: High Speed Rail.

And it’s coming to Louisville.According to several high-resolution maps of the proposed Chicago Hub Network, which is itself part of the larger, national rail infrastructure, The River City has apparently made the cut for inclusion into Obama’s flagship transportation initiative. While the specifics are still being ironed out (and we’ve yet to hear anything beyond a mere generalized statement) the transformative economic potential of such a line would, in effect, create the kind of density we so desperately speak at a time when more humans than at any point in history are living an urban life, not a rural one.

In lieu of conventional wisdom’s dumb “density first, rail later” argument — which assumes that roads are a kind of default choice — Obama’s approach recognizes that transportation is a medium, and that it has as much impact on a community as do buildings, people, and public spaces. Whereas more roads and highways generate more traffic, pollution and stress, high-speed rail alleviates road and air congestion, in addition to making life a little easier by phasing out “road rage.”

Most intriguing is what such a line might portend for the massively expensive Ohio River Bridges Project and its sleeker counterpart, 8664. Specifically, given the traffic-relieving capabilities of rail, any argument that suggests removal of I-64 from downtown would make traffic problems worse would be a moot argument — If less people are on the road because they’re riding a train, then a lower-capacity downtown boulevard becomes not only feasible, but desirable.

And if such a line comes to fruition, why would we even need a bigger, scarier, and hideously more expensive highway system?

But don’t take my word for it; here’s B-ROCK hisself: