| > people living in downtown Chicago You can get to every significant Midwestern city on Amtrak from downtown Chicago. In fact, one of Amtrak's main weaknesses is that you often have to transfer through Chicago when it doesn't make geographic sense. That doesn't apply to Chicagoans. The Amtrak map is enlightening [0]. You can even do some train trips from downtown Chicago that make absolutely no sense in the era of flight (the rail tickets cost more than airfare and take 10x as long). I'd argue that anywhere you can't easily get on a train from Chicago is either too small to support rail service, or too far to be convenient by any mode except air. There are a couple other places where people tend to live without cars, like the Bay Area. We already have good passenger rail service to Sacramento/Davis, and the SF/LA corridor is being developed. >People own cars because they need them frequently for daily activities like commuting or errands Correct, and when they already own cars, they already have easy access to inter-city travel (within distances that would be convenient by rail) via the interstates. Building HSR on these routes could provide a more convenient alternative, but the improvement is minor and incremental. We need a massive investment in rail in this country, but we need it on urban and commuter systems. Inter-city travel already works almost as well as we could reasonably expect it to. [0] https://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/948/674/System0211_101web,0.pdf |