The entire Great Lakes region is decently densely populated.

- Columbus - Cleveland 142 miles

- Columbus - Cincinnati 106 miles

- Cleveland - Pittsburgh 134 miles

- Cleveland - Toledo 114 miles

- Columbus - Toledo 142 miles

- Toledo - Detroit 58 miles (Cleveland, Columbus, & Cincinnati can share this)

- Toledo - Chicago 244 miles (Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, & Detroit can share this)

Theoretically, you can connect Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, & Pittsburgh into <3 hr trips by HSR.

That's going to beat flying. And that connects about:

- Chicago 9.5M

- Detroit 4.5M

- Pittsburgh 2.3M

- Cincinatti 2.3M

- Columbus 2.2M

- Cleveland 2.1M

- TOTAL = 23M+ people (~7% of the US)

For 940 miles of rail...

Even considering that HSR costs ~$100M per mile - that's about $4k per person.

That sounds like a lot. But since we have frequent opportunities to finance 30-year treasuries at ~1.5% interest and the Fed mandates inflation to be ~2% or higher:

=PMT(-0.005/12, 30*12, -4000)

That's about ~$10.30 per month per person. Considering the average tax payer is paying ~$1,300 per month in federal taxes - 0.7% of that going to HSR where it makes sense - does not seem like a terrible idea...

For context, highways cost about ~$200B per year - which comes down to ~$49.75 per tax payer per month - however, only about 1/4th of that is Federal taxes (~$12.43).

I'll also add that the Great Lakes is probably at the bottom of the list of regions where HSR would make sense. Other places like the Northeast make much more sense.

Indianapolis connects all these cities already (and with rail to some of them)... 2.8M

Maybe I am misunderstanding some of the intent. But yes, a rail from NYC to Miami is far, but when you chunk it up, it makes sense. For a NYC-Miami, you could have stops in Philadelphia, DC/Baltimore, Richmond, Raleigh/Durham, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, Orlando. It would really depend on the route. Like a NYC-Portland OR or Seattle, you can make some pretty good stops from NYC to Chicago, but once you get past Chicago, there probably is any really good population centers for stops there between Chicago and Portland/Seattle. So in some areas, those distances can be justified, but for sure we have some that can't be easily justified.

The thing about NYC-Miami is that north of DC the population is along the coast but south of it the population is inland. A route via Charlotte and Atlanta probably pencils out better than one via Charleston and Savannah.

Yea it does. If your gonna make a stop in North Carolina/South Carolina, Charlotte would be a good spot because it would have some good access to then change transportation and go to Charleston or Raleigh or Greensboro. Didn't consider Atlanta though since that would be a lease direct route to Miami. You have to go back East to hit something like Jacksonville or Orlando. But the trade off is, Atlanta is probably a more wanted destination than Savannah. Or pehaps something like Augusta where you don't have to go as far West, but your still not too terribly far from Atlanta.

Sadly our 1000 mile trips currently take ~24 hours rather than the 5-6 that it could. Multiple factors for that: slow trains; long stops; cargo rail gets priority over passenger rail.

Yep.

Even the fastest trains Amtrak offers ("Acela") are zoned - or permitted, not sure what the right term is here - up to 150 MPH, and only on specific portions of the route.

Makes no sense at all.

The sense is that the Northeast corridor has too many curves and roadbed issues to be able to go faster.

There would have to be constructed a new corridor, not in the same path as existing railroad rights of way, for not a small amount of money, and going through expensive real estate.

The political will for that is not in existence, so far.

And the fact is that while taking a train the full length of the Northeast Corridor takes too long to be practical most of the time, NYC to points north and NYC to points south works pretty well (i.e. is competitive with flying) with existing trains.

Easy to complain on the internet. Hard to change a hard left into a sweeping arc in the middle of New Haven.

Even ignoring the money, if you try and do a project like that you are going to get slapped in the face by all the same "cutting apart muh neighborhood" rhetoric that gets used against highways. Grade separation and "just paying those people to go away" are both expensive enough to be non-starters.

Highways and rail create different kinds of disruption in neighborhoods. Highways constantly have traffic, creating noise and pollution all the time. Railroads are mostly quiet, with loud traffic in short bursts.

Passenger railroads are narrower than urban highways. The US-101 freeway cuts through Echo Park and Westlake in Los Angeles, taking up as much as 330 feet of width, counting on/off ramps. California HSR has trench sections specced as narrow as 72 feet[1], and most of its urban rights-of-way are under 100 feet wide.

Walking next to the 101 in Echo Park you can see how it so starkly divides what was once a single connected neighborhood. The light rail lines (about ~40-50 ft to cross) in other neighborhoods don't give that impression.

[1]: https://www.hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/docs/programs/eir_...

I have no love for highway pits but to play if off like an HSR pit is some quaint little light rail is simply farcical.

You're being dishonest or ignorant. The fact that you compare max-width of one to min-width of the other rules out one option. A pit is a pit. You're limited to crossing at a few specific points no matter how narrow it is and traveling to those points accounts for the bulk of the distance covered. The physical width only matters if you're evaluating the neighborhood for visual appeal and not actual livability. "Quiet most of the time" doesn't really count for much because people acclimate to the background noise levels and that one train per hour is just as jarring as that one motorcycle with the insane exhaust per hour. At least with subways and airports it's every couple minutes so you get more used to it.

High speed rail is like having a jet plane go by, given the intent to run at, say 150 to 200 miles per hour, and has its own troublesome neighbor issues.

All corridors are troublesome.

I regularly travel Tucson <-> Ft. Lauderdale. 2100 miles. Including ground transport, door to door is 10-12 hours.

That's interesting. You must have some much better train routes out in the big empty spaces in between. What line is that?

For me, in DC, the trip is half the distance (1,000 miles) and would take twice as long (25 hours, according to Google).

10-12 hours door to door if flying.

It is 32 hours if driving 130-150 kph on the freeway (80-90 mph) without stopping for food, bathrooms, gas, or sleep. It's probably a few hundred hours with the train since you will have to go a few hundred or a few thousand kilometers north first.

Interestingly, there is a long train line from Louisiana to Los Angeles called the Sunset Limited. Up until Hurricane Katrina in 2005 it ran between Orlando Florida and Los Angeles,

That line is Southwest Airlines.

Wow, crazy! On Amtrak?

On Amtrak, that's a 102 hour trip that takes you through Chicago and DC. Not an exaggeration. Given usual delays, that 102h is wildly optimistic. Coach seats: $387.