56 High Speed Rail Links We Should've Built Already

What people said

theluketaylor · 2024-02 · Strong recommendation

The CityNerd youtube channel recently did a list of city pairs ideally suited for high speed rail based on Spain's own network. spoiler alert: the northeast corridor plays a pretty heavy part, but it's not the only place in the US high speed rail makes a ton of sense. Highly recommended. [VIDEO]

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alistairSH · 2024-05 · Recommendation

Mixed answer. One driving factor in the creation of the interstate system was military - we wanted the ability to easily move troops/supplies across the US without airlift or rail. Not sure that's still a valid need (as in, I don't know - would need to ask a general). Also, the US is huge. We do need some sort of road system to get across it. Building rail to everywhere is prohibitively expensive. That said, we should/could have good high speed rail in the densest areas. Like expand the Acela corridor CityNerd does a nice summary of city pairs that should have high speed rail based on population and distance... [VIDEO] tl;dr - DC-NYC tops the list (and include Philly and Balt). LA to SF is near the top. Chicago-DET-Toronto is up there. And on down the list. Basically, there's no good reason (other than momentum/history) to not build out solid rail networks over parts of the US. I don't think anybody reasonably expects an LA-NYC link any time soon because flying is a better option for now.

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browningstreet · 2024-04 · Recommendation

CityNerd identifies 56 train segments that should be built, using data and reasonable, precedented criteria: [VIDEO] His video description: "Nothing that exists in North America fits the definition of true high-speed rail. If we actually ever started building a network, where would we start? And how would we know when we were done? This video details a methodology for answering all those questions, then counts up 56 city pairs we really should've had high-speed rail service between long, long ago."

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