I've been short on blogospheric heterodoxies of late, and while there's no point in contrarianisms for contrarianism's sake, it always gives me pause. So I was a bit happy to think that it's not clear that regional high-speed rail would be a very good idea in most the United States. The Northeast Corridor already has the Acela, so the only issue there is that the US probably needs to scale back its safety-in-the-event of a crash requirements to allow for lighter trains, and do whatever it is that needs to be done to the tracks to allow for faster travel.
But that's really the only place it makes sense, thanks to the region's dense development and robust commuter rail services. Take the Midwest. Ideally, you'd run high-speed lines connecting Minneapolis-St Paul, Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo. But there are lots of outlying medium-sized towns that make that problematic. What do people living in Racine do: drive an hour north to Milwaukee, park, then hop on a train to Indianapolis, making a stop in Chicago? Ah, you say, we'll run local trains that stop at places like Racine! Suddenly, those trips get a lot longer; a train that stops in Racine has to stop in Waukega, Gary, probably Lafayette, etc. Either way, air travel is starting to look tempting; either I have to drive and park anyway, at which point I might as well take the somewhat faster flight, or I have to make stops in other medium-sized towns, at which point the flight is a better use of my time.
Yes, it works in Europe, but of course in Europe the overall population density is higher. Plus, the rail system is at some level owned by the national government, so unless you get state governments to pony up, you're asking America to swallow a large tax increase. We need a better understanding of the country's travel patterns before we build huge rail systems. In the meantime, it seems more promising to focus on metro-level commuter rail and intra-city subways/elevated rails/streetcars than pie-in-the-sky regional projects.
