The first real one was the Texas Triangle: a project to use TGV technology to connect San Antonio, Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth was established nearlya two decades ago. Highways and above all airlines strongly lobbied against it. It was finally killed by, who else, Dubya.

The project coming closest to reality was a whole network for Florida. They evewn wrote out the main tender and announced a winner. That after voters even put it into the Florida constitution in a referendum. But after years of sabotage and a campaign consisting almost completely of flat-out lies, Jeb Bush put the question of finance on a referendum (simultaneously with the 2004 Presidential Elections) -- and people voted for it...

A project resurfacing again and again is LA to Las Vegas, also in maglev form. But as far as I know, it was never much more than daydreaming.

The project currently closest to reality is the California High-Speed Rail. Planning of the line is well-advanced, with extensive cost estimates and impact studies. But California had a budget crisis, and Schwarzenegger tried the same tricks as Jeb Bush in open support of the highway lobby ("we are a car state"), even though studies showed highway widening would be a more expensive yet lesser capacity option. Still, the project isn't killed yet, and there shall be a referendum on bond issuing.

Further proposals were for a Midwest network centered on Chicago, and lines in Virginia. In both cases, "medium high-speed", e.g. faster trains on upgraded lines seems to get support instead (if even that).

The most ambitious proposal resurrects the Texas Triangle: the insane project of the Trans Texas Corridors, with 16-lane highways and six railway tracks (two for each type of transport) and pipes of everything. I guess if part of it ever becomes reality, it will be the roads, and the rail part will be shelved for cost overruns.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Which they are now lobbying to privatize.  

Technology and society March forward!  

Not.  

The Fates are kind.

However, this is more focused on competing with the car for transport mode share rather than competing with air ... the higher speed to allow it to more effectively recruit "right angle" park and ride patronage with a lower total trip time. IOW, more for Cleveland to Columbus than Cleveland to New York.

Where, as in Sydney for example, the existing rail corridor is often completely built out, that changes the balance dramatically.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

If VHS routes in the US are laid out so that the corridor also runs through towns that are the target for MHS interurbans, that means a substantial reduction in the effective trip speed of the VHS route as it deviates further and further from the direct route between its target markets ... and also as it makes accommodation for the existing built environment.

And meanwhile in many areas of the country there are freight corridors in use that were allocated to serve dual track systems and are in use by single-track plus passing loop systems. Because of the byzantine complexity of the access rights on the corridor ... strategic parcels that were bought outright, easements, perpetual roll-over leases, etc. ... the owners of those access rights rarely narrowed the corridor when they switched to single track ... that normally does not happen unless the entire corridor has been abandoned (and sometimes not even then ... it can sometimes take a while for an abandoned route to make its way through the system and lose its corridor status).

And because of the time that they were laid out and their importance in the development of population centers, they often run exactly where we would want an interurban branch line to run. That is especially the case for Dixie and the Great Lakes States, which are politically critical to ensuring the an expanded passenger rail system is not seen as a pure subsidy to the "urban east coast".

Get an new track on that system that relies on stretches of the freight track for its passing loops, and enact priority for the passenger services, and you have a substantial savings compared to the cost of acquiring the right of way for a new alignment.

And, as in the above thread, that is not the conditions that are in place in another area, then don't do it there.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.