In article , "DGDevin" wrote:


"Doug Miller" wrote in message
...

If high-speed rail were commercially viable in the United States, it would
already exist.

Urban rail systems in America disappeared in large part because after WWII
the automobile and petroleum industries saw far greater profits to be made
selling cars and buses and the fuel to run them, not because streetcars
weren't a good form of public transport.

... and in even greater part because a booming economy made cars both
plentiful and affordable, and people decided they preferred the freedom and
convenience of private transport to public transport.

And looking at how air travel is going these days, the idea of high speed
rail is starting to look pretty good.

Except for the hundreds of gigabucks -- that we don't have -- required to
build the infrastructure.

In recent years my wife and I have
elected to make 1,500 mile road trips rather than set foot in an airport,
and that was before air travellers had to choose between being groped or
x-rayed.

Fuel prices are going to have the final say on this issue. When gas
eventually gets back to five (or ten) bucks a gallon the train is going to
be a lot more attractive at any speed. A lot of things happened because gas
was cheap, but the clock is ticking on that situation.

If gasoline becomes that expensive, high speed rail may become commercially
viable; if so, someone will see that there's money to be made, and build it.
The more likely outcome of $10/gallon gasoline, IMHO, is explosive growth in
electric cars and new technology for powering them (e.g. ultracapacitors
instead of batteries), with an accompanying increase in the construction of
nuclear power plants.