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Everyone at this web site knows I support HSR. However, I think it would be best to concentrate on building HSR between the four major population areas first, with a line or two on the west coast. I have even drawn lines on a map of the United States dealing with county population using the 2000 Census. The dark blue color counties have population larger than 100,000. Surely we can build something similar and close to these lines. My map is basically a parralegram with a line from the NEC to Chicago, to Texas, to Florida, and back, around 4,500 miles. I have added other lines which are bascially branches off the backbone parralegram. Some lines on my map are duplicated, I drew them to show that there are choices, for example we really don't need two lines running from Texas to Florida/Georgia, one lline will do. Its the same with the east coast line, one line will do. I prefer a line down to Raleigh and then west to Charolotte on the way to Atlanta(which by the way is not drawn on my map). As for the price, I have come to the conclusion after serious study that HSR will run around $15 million a mile, less in rural areas and probably more in urban areas. As one can readily see on my map, the population of counties are not very great on the Great Plains and in the Rocky Mountains, whereas east of Kansas City and Dallas the population is quite dense, enough to support HSR. As for distance, each leg of my parralegram will be in the neighborhood of 800-900 miles. Most of the branches are below 600 miles. Considering that a HSR TGV type train averages over 150 mph, with speeds up to 186 mph, each leg can easily be traveled in 6 hours or less. One trainset on each leg can make 4 trips in a day, two trainsets can make 8 trips in a day, three trainsets can make 12 trips in a day. Instead of the daily service we have today, we can have service in each direction every 2 hours.....Great! This is airline service frequency! If we built every line I drew, the distance is only 9,000 miles. Cut a few duplicated lines, and the distance will be close to 8,000 miles. Maybe the feds should just build the parralegram and let the states build lines to it. A lot of ifs. But 5,000 miles of HSR rail @ $15 million per mile is $75 billion, 9,000 miles of HSR rail is $135 billion. I SUPPORT HSR SO MUCH, I SUPPORT A MORATORIUM ON HIGHWAY AND AIRPORT SPENDING FOR TWO YEARS TO BUILD THIS NETWORK. Once it is built quickly, we won't need to spend so much on highways and airports..... http://homepage.mac.com/donclark/.Public/DonHSR.jpg
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