The sane passenger rail plans in the US West are regional. Connecting Portland, the Puget Sound and Vancouver on the one hand. Serving the cities of California’s Central Valley on the other. The California route makes some sense as a high speed route. Less so as a connection of LA and San Francisco because it is roundabout. The more direct route follows the old Camino Real up the Salinas River Valley and then the San Andreas Rift toward San Jose where the 101 runs today.

The US west is mostly empty. When you look at the article’s map even the named places are tiny. La Junta is tiny. Flagstaff is less than 100,000 as a metro. Reno is about half a million. Cheyenne is in Wyoming. The entire state has fewer than a million people.

In terms of European rail travel, I avoided the low hanging fruit like Dublin to Lisbon, Reykjavík to London, or Oslo to Paris.