Why the United States will never have high-speed rail

[DFW]

10. It would cost many years and untold billions to build. We should do it anyway.

This is a good article spoiled by a few glaring inaccuracies.

No, we do NOT endure the TSA for a cup of coffee. I don't know anyone that flies to Seattle for a cup of coffee, and neither does the author of the article. Such hyperbole belongs edited out of a discussion of so serious a subject. Hi-speed rail travel here in Europe is (for the most part) at least as expensive as flying, and often more so. Building those tracks and new trains was unbelievably expensive. Plus, due to a few attempted terrorist attacks on trains, there are now TSA-like security checks at the entrances to tracks for some hi-speed trains here (notably la Gare du Nord in Paris and Atocha station in Madrid, sporadic checks at the Gare du Midi/Zuidstation in Brussels).

With the ability of these trains to travel comfortably at 200 KPH (120 MPH) and faster (often 50% faster), they (when on time) are far more time-efficient than planes for many short-haul and some mid-range routes. The fact that trains here in Europe are now (FINALLY) all non-smoking helps a lot, too, although there is always still the rare trip from hell when the person sitting next you has puffed away for half an hour before boarding the train, and their clothes, hair and breath still reek of tobacco smoke. It is like sitting next to a toxic waste dump, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Environmental considerations will force us to build these trains sooner or later. It will be nearly impossible in the densely populated BOSWASH corridor, but existing track can and MUST be vastly improved so the Acela trains can run at capacity speed. NYC to DC used to take four hours. Now it's 3. It should be 2.

Chicago to Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Indianapolis would make sense. Maybe even Kansas City to Denver. Phoenix to Albuquerque, NYC to Albany (and points west), Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and onward to major cities in Ohio, Atlanta to Charlotte, Little Rock to Memphis and on to Nashville and even up to D.C.

The routes will run at a serious deficit, and will have to be subsidized, as the expense of starting now will be crushing. The Republicans will go berserk about this, even though they seemed to have no problem with Trump adding a trillion to the deficit on their watch. To hell with them. My humble opinion is that this would be a necessary investment--not in the short term, but in the long term. This will HAVE to happen sooner or later. The longer we wait, the more it will cost, which, in turn, gives the Republicans an ever stronger argument as to why we shouldn't do it. Granted, almost no one will opt for a coast-to-coast rail trip, even at high speed, unless, like Gene Wilder's character in "The Silver Streak," you just "want to be bored." But there are many routes in the USA where air travel could be replaced (or at least supplemented) by hi-speed rail travel, and should be.