Re: “What are the prospects for a high-speed rail network in the United States?”
Have a look at what the Iran war has cost and that (among other disasters) will tell you how much is left in the kitty for anything.
Exactly. Having all those stops and then you could have basically ridden a Greyhound bus to the same destination at lesser cost. And the more stops, the less time the train spends doing its true full speed, its most efficient speed. You end up with a bullet train that needs to decelerate right after it’s only just gotten up to max speed, because it’s time to enter the next station.
Amtrak’s Chicago-St. Louis route is 284 miles via rail. The congested parts (37 miles between Chicago and Joliet; and Alton-St. Louis - roughly 20 miles depending on which set of tracks are in use at the time) reduce that to 227 miles. Even if the train ran non-stop between Joliet and Alton at 160 mph it would only cut about 35 minutes from the trip.
Of course, practically speaking, the train needs to stop at Bloomington-Normal, because that’s a major connection point for service to Peoria, Quad Cities and Champaign-Urbana, among others. And Springfield gets a lot of business from both the St. Louis and Chicago areas because it’s the state capital and all the Lincolnalia there. Figure those two stops have to remain on the route, that adds at least 15 minutes (the timetables say 20) to the total time. That cuts the difference to 20 minutes between 110 and 160 mph.
Not to mention, I don’t know if all the curves on the route are built for a 160 mph train. I know many were rebuilt just to get the maximmum speed up to 110.
At some point someone has to start applying a cost/benefit analysis to all these suggestions.
And before the Iran War, America spent trillions on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently the military budget is being grossly inflated as is the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In short, there is plenty of money except for domestic infrastructure and investment.