Maybe the emphasis on high speed in not necessary. People already seem to love sitting around in all kinds of environments.. bars, watching netflix, or programming for a lot of people here. What if instead of figuring out what kind of rails would be needed to move a train at the speed of flight, we figured out what kind of rails were needed to economically move the equivalent of a first class lounge from Los Angeles to San Francisco in like seven or eight hours... or maybe it's an eco cruise ship, or a new bus design. Either way, for a lot of people who board just before 10AM on a Sunday, and watch two NFL games, the net travel time from Los Angeles to San Francisco could be close to 0.. and you can't beat that.