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[quote user="BaltACD"] If the USA is to get TRUE high speed rail transportation it cannot coexist on tracks used by main line freight transportation....freight would pound the track structure out of high speed specs in very short order.  Additionally the clearing time for a freight to run and not impeded the operation of a High Speed passenger train would mitigate the effective operation of freight. Secondly, most of today's existing rail routes were laid out in the early 19th Century by surveyors on horse back depending upon strong Irish and Germans to be the earth movers for the right of way and designed for the operation of trains at 20/30 MPH in the 19th Century. Do we want to operate 21st Century High Speed, high technology trains on horse & buggy rights of way. <div style="clear:both;"></div> [/quote] Just to be clear, I believe that the intention is to run HSR on its own dedicated track rather than share the same tracks with freight trains.  What is being proposed is to only share the corridor with the freight railroads.  The fact that the corridors date back to the horse and buggy days does not necessarily make them obsolete for HSR application.  Much of that old corridor is straight enough for HSR, and what is not will simply be re-worked.  It is still much cheaper that acquiring a new corridor that will spawn a legal battle for every foot.  So, one might ask why the freight railroads would be dragging their feet on this.  They have the extra space and the government is going to build the HSR track. The problem I see is that, even with its own dedicate track, HSR will interfere with freight operations.  There will be route conflicts between HSR and freight trains.  There may even be some degree of track sharing to get through certain bottlenecks.  Just the construction phase alone is bound to interfere with freight operations.  There will be massive projects to reduce curves, change drainage, move freight trackage, eliminate grade crossings, and revise signaling.  The delays and interference of these projects will result in enormous costs that may be very hard to reconcile in such a sweeping agreement where the government will be improving the infrastructure of the freight railroads as a side effect of building HSR.  With these massive track infrastructure projects, the benefits of those improvements that redound to the freight railroads will have to be weighed against the cost imposed on the freight railroads from the interference of those projects.
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