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Mr. ICETRAIN is being snide in his reply, but I can be Snyder....In any case, preliminary estimates indicate the cost to build a coast-to-coast HSR line DC/Baltimore through to San Francisco, connecting all major cities enroute (i.e. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake, Reno, Sacramento) would be in excess of $100 billion. The trainsets (10-car, off the shelf Alsthom/bombardier HSR units) would run about $30 million each. This is a lot of money. But it is doable with a combination of long-term public and private financing. That is how the existing rail lines were built (and those lines will still be needed for freight and commuter lines). Consider that we are at a crossroads in the USA. We must EITHER build massive new airports even further from the cities they serve (and only two new ones have opened in the last 30 years, Dallas/Ft. Worth and Denver), OR build HSR lines to serve the burgeoning urban areas of the US in the long-term future. Given that oil is a rapidly diminishing and finite-supply commodity (world peak production passed in the year 2000, according to the ASSN FOR THE STUDY OF PEAK OIL, see website), is it not prudent to begin a system that can use a variety of sources of electrical energy supply for power (i.e. nuclear, conventional, wind, geothermal, etc. etc.)? Transportation is 20 % of the economy, and is the key to it. Unless we prepare for the future (as Japan and Europe have done), we will be behind the curve, permanently, with all the consequences that entails. J. Snyder
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