Amtrak's $117 Billion Plan For High Speed Travel

For 117 billion, you can fly a lot of people on planes. What a waste of money.

...and the planned completion is 2040. I would guess Amtrak has no intention to follow through, but instead wants to get their hands on the free stimulus handouts. To be less pessimistic, high speed rail lines are great. Having spent time in Germany, their ICE rail line is simply the fastest way to get around. It's faster than flying when you account for convenient schedules, no waiting, no security delays, short scheduling lead times, etc. But, would it really cost $115B to basically upgrade existing tracks? High speed trains require higher track tolerances and stronger rail beds. The German ICE trains were built to accommodate old and new tracks so they can run relatively fast on the old and flat out on the new.

. . . and scale and population density play heavily into this equation. There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction that all "good" things that work in Europe should be done here. I could see upgrading rail service between highly populated areas of the U.S. that are close enough to make this pay off. People seem to forget the distances involved. You can fit all of western Europe in just a few of our states. We already have the Acela between Boston and D.C. and points in between. That's about the extent of where we should have high speed rail. Other than that, it's a waste of money.