[ihaveajob]

Personally, I care because it diverts attention and thrust from developing proven alternatives to air travel, such as HSR. When something that big hinges on a narrow swing in public opinion, and someone starts dangling a pie in the sky idea, the result can be abandonment of the main idea, at the service of an unlikely moonshot by a big ego.

[leetcrew]

I don't see HSR as a good alternative to air travel in a country as spread out as the US. a proper HSR route for the northeast corridor would be great; it's kind of ridiculous that a plane is the best way to get from boston to DC. when you start looking at traversing entire coasts, it's really hard for a train to compete with air travel. a non-stop flight from seattle to LA takes about two and a half hours, plus all the security nonsense. at 200mph, a train that makes zero stops would take about six hours. once you factor in travel to/from the airport and security, that's actually not too bad, but nonstop train routes are uncommon. the situation is even worse for cross-country flights. NY to LA is about six hours by plane; it would be about fourteen hours on a (highly unlikely) nonstop train.

frankly (as an east-coaster) I would be happy just to see the existing rail lines be price competitive with airlines. I greatly prefer traveling by train, and I would be willing to accept a longer transit time if it were not both slower and more expensive.

[ihaveajob]

Both Europe and China are of comparable size to the US, and they enjoy high speed train since decades ago. It won't replace a NYC-LA trip anytime now, but the coastal corridors and various regional hubs (Texas triangle, lake Michigan, etc) are perfectly sized.

[throwaway2048]

Here is an excellent article that discusses this (surprisingly old) phenomena

http://www.cat-bus.com/2017/12/gadgetbahn/