Originally Posted by
Artpen100
Politics is not the problem for the NY-DC-Boston Acela corridor. It is the cost of urban real estate in the area (and the difficulty in forcing the sale of it if you could afford it) to provide the straight lines required for high speed travel. The TGV is largely crossing farmland between the big cities. Politics may have more of an impact in other areas, but, frankly, a lot of the proposed routes don't make much sense to me. Only DC-Chicago-NY, Houston-Dallas-Austin and maybe SF-LA. Otherwise, the traffic just isn't there. If between two given cities there are only one or two flights a day, how can they be expected to fill a train every hour?
How do they calculate whether a given route can be supported? Japan's Shinkansen goes thorough urban areas too. If the will is sufficient, that should not be a stopper.
As for density, I don't think anyone is suggesting they just build high speed lines randomly across the States.