[Wytwwww]

> I added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million.

Well just Boston (where it would presumably start) is over 4 million (and whole Massachusetts is almost as dense as Belgium). Minneapolis is another ~3 million. Chicago is over 8 million. I didn't even look up the other cities... yeah it's lower but really not as much as you're implying.

[muspimerol]

Oh if we're talking about metro area population, then the EU route is also significantly higher (for example, Paris goes from 2 million to 13 million). I was just looking at city limits in both cases.

Honestly I agree with your sentiment. We should connect all these urban areas with passenger rail. But I don't think that this is the first step. Most American cities have atrocious public transit, which needs to be fixed first. No one will take a train from Chicago to Minneapolis if they just have to rent a car once they get there anyway. It would be a shame to invest billions in connecting cities with high speed rail, only to have low ridership because it still doesn't compete with flying/driving.

[Wytwwww]

> Oh if we're talking about metro area population

I was just looking at the urban area. The official population of many cities in the US is almost entirely meaningless in this context.