Better propaganda. Grist:

During the Depression, FDR’s administration smartly commissioned photographers to document the country’s poverty as well as government-funded infrastructure projects, such as the building of airports, bridges, and highways. While no comparable project exists today, the arts and design community still could play an integral role in explaining the impact of 21st-century infrastructure on American life. Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., for example, have invested heavily in revamping the image and purpose of their metropolitan transit systems; the rewards of integrating design and infrastructure are visible not only in their smart-looking buses and ad campaigns, but in their growing ridership levels and the demand for transit-oriented development.
The high-speed rail campaign has thus far failed to create a vision of what better rail could mean for American culture. The media and advertising industry have successfully portrayed cars and airplanes as the paragons of American technological and corporate prowess, and the symbols of freedom, sex, and democracy. By comparison, the high-speed rail coalition has failed to create any identity around passenger rail. Ad men and apps creators, urban planners and landscape architects are just some of the designers acutely aware of the country’s direction and equipped to recast high-speed rail as transportation best suited to handle our world of imperiled natural resources, of sharing rather than ownership, of professional mobility instead of nine-to-five jobs, and of communication rather than isolation.

You know what should be on the new posters? Math. If the math works, build the trains.