An experimental French train shattered the speed record for rail travel the other day, evoking visions of high-speed transportation we can only dream about in California. While the French were pushing a train to a blistering 357.2 mph, we're saddled with a self-imposed inertia that has pushed the Golden State from technology's cutting-edge to the bottom of the knife drawer.

The French, in a country roughly the size of California, already have nearly 1,000 miles of high-speed rail lines. We have precisely zero in this state.

China is planning a massive high-speed rail system of some 7,500 miles. It's expected to cost a minimum of $250 billion. They'll be buying the bulk of the equipment and engineering services from other countries. France, Germany and Japan will get the lion's share of that market. American companies -- representing the nation that invented passenger rail travel -- will get next to nothing. And our trade deficit with China will continue to soar.

We're spending billions in bond revenues to upgrade our crumbling highways in California, an unfortunate necessity after decades of neglect. But that's still a 1950s solution for 21st century transportation needs.

And it's more expensive than rail transportation would be. A report by the California High Speed Rail Authority says a high-speed rail network in the southern half of the state would cost $37 billion. Expanding highways and airports to accommodate as many passengers as the proposed high-speed system would carry would cost $82 billion -- more than twice as much.

A single rail line has a passenger capacity more than three times that of a six-lane highway, and requires less than half the land.

Opponents of high-speed rail like to say that Californians will never get out of their cars, that a high-speed rail system wouldn't attract ridership. But existing Amtrak lines in California already have impressive ridership: The Pacific Surfliner between San Diego and San Luis Obispo is the nation's second busiest passenger rail corridor; the Capitol Corridor, connecting Sacramento and the Bay Area, is the third busiest; the San Joaquins, running between Sacramento and Bakersfield, are fifth busiest.

They account for the equivalent of a half-billion vehicle miles a year. Those are trips not taken on overtaxed freeways such as Highway 99.

A consulting firm reported in March that the potential annual ridership of the high-speed rail system would be between 86 million and 117 million passengers by 2030. That level of use would generate between $2.6 billion and $3.9 billion in annual revenue.

All those millions of people wouldn't be in cars, polluting the air. They wouldn't be spending countless tiresome hours in lines at increasingly congested airports.

Rail travel is more comfortable than flying. Seats are bigger and the cars are more spacious than airliners. Trains are less subject to delays because of weather. They're cheaper, too. Small wonder that much of the opposition to high-speed rail comes from the airline industry.

They're right to be worried. One example: In 2004, after the English Channel tunnel -- the "Chunnel" -- opened to connect Britain and France, the British carrier Ryanair dropped its London-Brussels connection. The tunnel made it possible for Eurostar trains to cover the 200 miles between the two European capitals in 2 hours and 20 minutes. That, by the way, is about the same as a trip from Fresno to Los Angeles. In 2 hours, 20 minutes. Without having to go to an airport. And without having to drive.

It's all there: economic development, environmental improvements, less congestion on highways, lower relative cost. So why haven't we done it yet?

A $9.9 billion high-speed rail bond was scheduled to go before voters in 2004, but was postponed to 2006. Then it was kicked to 2008, and now there's talk -- much of it from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who likes to brag about how forward thinking we are in this state -- about pushing it back even farther, because all the debt we're taking on for highways and other infrastructure needs is stretching the state's borrowing capacity.

That's not forward-thinking. That's clinging to the solutions of the past, a timidity that we once scorned in California. We used to be the place where the world was reinvented every day. Now we watch the rest of the world speed past us -- at 357.2 mph.