[melling]

Yes, this excuse has been given for the past 50 years. Usually, in reference to Europe.

That might explain why they’re building 25,000 miles of high-speed rail in China, but it doesn’t address why the US has zero.

You’re being sort of vague with the numbers of course.

If you actually look at population densities in Spain, for example, and compare them to California or New York, what do you think we’d find?

For some reason, people like yourself want to average Montana, North Dakota, California, and New York. The US does not have a uniform population density.

[vonmoltke]

People also want the federal government to fund the construction of this infrastructure, which is a very hard sell (and possibly unconstitutional) if you don't average all of those states in some way. Most of the opposition to Amtrak and existing infrastructure projects like the Gateway Project is coming from those states, who don't see improving rail service in the Mid-Atlantic and New England as something they want their tax money spent on.

We need to fix that problem, and that means not simply writing them off as irrelevant because of their lack of population. Australia is likely facing the same problem.

[melling]

The federal government funded the highway system.

There are 350 million Americans. Do you know who pays most of the taxes to the federal government? It’s not the people in the mid-West.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state

[Gibbon1]

I tried a simple estimate on how much a HSR line would cost from Chicago to Denver. About $20-30 billion. It's a 1000 miles of flat nothing, so it's cheap per mile.

Chicago --> St Louis --> Kansas City --> Denver is about 1000 miles.