High-speed rail for The Korean and Abrahamic Schools
High-speed rail as a school bus
Ever since the first Shinkansen train was launched in Japan in 1964, high-speed rail (HSR) has been a practical option for those who want to commute daily to faraway locations that would otherwise be out of reach.
In 1827, 137 years before the Shinkansen launch, a vehicle was introduced to carry a certain group of individuals each day to a relatively distant location.These people were children, and the mode of transportation was the school bus, which existed as a horse-drawn carriage for 77 years.Prior to that, people could not picture a vehicle whose sole purpose was to carry multiple students to school each day.Students in rural areas could now reach a central school without taking their parents or draught horses away from the fields.This innovation has had a significant effect on worldwide literacy rates since farmers who could not afford time away from their fields were now able to send their children to school. High-speed rail can also have a significant effect on a worldwide priority - the resolution of the Korean Peninsula and Golan Heights stalemates. Unsuccessful resolution attempts and the maintenance of the militaristic status quo in these two conflicts have consumed billions of dollars.By investing the same amount on high-speed rail links, the international community can enable children of each side's leaders to learn together by day and describe it to their parents by night.
Pyongyang - Panmunjeom (site of The Korean School)
The French TGV trains have been clocked at 263 km/hr for an average speed - not fastest speed - between two stations. Let us assume that that average speed is unattainable on a daily basis and that 240 km/kr is more realistic. If Pyongyang is about 145 km in a straight line from Panmunjeom, the North Korean students would have about a 36 minute ride on the train each way, during which their teachers or other adults could take attendance, conduct a study hall period, or show educational videos. School would start the moment the students boarded the train in Pyongyang. If the North Korean students in this calculation are given 34 minutes to get to the Pyongyang station from their homes, which is a generous amount with there being minimal traffic in Pyongyang, they would have a 70-minute commute each way, which is less than what some students in the U.S. and elsewhere encounter.
Seoul is roughly 50 km from Panmunjeom, so if these students were to travel by high-speed rail, their rail trips would be about 13 minutes. However, each student's commute to the Seoul station would be longer than those of their Pyongyang classmates given the traffic problems of Seoul. Also, a regular bus would be used on both sides to take to Panmunjeom those students who miss the train. They might be two hours late in arriving, but that is better than an absence.
Damascus - Al Qunaytirah (site of The Abrahamic School)
For Syria and Israel, high-speed rail is only needed for the Damascus students. Damascus is roughly 65 km from where the school would be. The benefits of attracting children of Israeli leaders in the provincial capitals of Nazareth and Haifa are outweighed by the cost of building the rail system, the students' long commutes if a surely expensive tunnel is not built through the Golan Heights, and especially by the fact that these children's parents would only be working in local governments and not in the Knesset in Jerusalem. Instead, the Israeli children would be coming from families in Katzrin, Israel's administrative center for the Golan Heights.
