Levy addresses this, and agrees with you: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/03/22/high-speed-rai... Basically, Amtrak started out with the existing rail network, which is going to be oriented to early-20th-century population centers, and so New Orleans is well-served by Amtrak standards. But a modern network in the South would be oriented more towards those parts of the South that have grown - Texas and the Piedmont - and less towards New Orleans, Memphis, and St. Louis.

Levy is wrong. There, I said it.

American growth of the last 80 years is incompatible with the future of the world. You won't save a sprawly mess by putting a high speed rail station in the center of it.

If it was an important city before the age of the automobile, it has a chance. Put the "future" rail network in the cities that have a future.

Point number two, and probably even more important than the first, is the fact that you have to get your plan through a million committees, and through Congress, etc. You need support. His plan won't get it. Too much of it goes through places that hate trains and "socialism". And then it tells the people that have nostalgic memories of a railroad that lifted their family out of the Jim Crow south to go pound sand. His plan will never go further than his blog :)

Would you like an analogy to this situation?

Everybody in tech has incredible ideas for the future. But the startup world is littered with companies that have had no success at all getting from point A to point B despite billions in VC money.

That's a good point. On the other hand, the future of the world probably includes sea level rise so New Orleans may not have much of a future.

And I fully accept that point :)

But as long as it exists, New Orleans means something to America.

But why does "mean something" translate to "build non-ecomically viable HSR"?

Are we stipulating that it's less economically viable than a brand-new line somewhere else?

Yes. It's an area with AT BEST stagnant growth, and likely contraction, versus areas like the Triangle in NC that are poorly served by rail and rapidly growing.