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I have followed this discussion for a while and from my point of view there are five major factors for establishing successful High Speed Rail: (Most of it has been mentioned before in more or less the same way) Distance: The cities connected shouldn't be too far in distance. All what's beyond a travelling time of four hours has to be avoided because air travelling has an advantage in time. (Here on Europe they even talk about three hours maximum). The distance should be even lower so travelling time stays under one hour. By this you can attract commuters who travel the way every day. With longer distances you may only attract week-end commuters. Besides, a shorter way will save money for the constructing. Number of cities: Of cost reasons: first connect two cites. If it becomes a success, you will get more money to build tracks to more cities. Population: Take at least one large city. It would also be helpful if there are smaller town in between. This will give the possibility to run fast regional trains on the same tracks. This means a better efficiency and you're bringing the trains to more people. Public Transport (In my opinion the most important factor): Much more people will use the trains if you give them the possibility to use public transport inside town to get to the train stations or continue their journey from there. Using a car getting to and from downtown isn't as comfortable as using the subway or light rail which stops just one floor below the high speed train. This is the weakness of most American cities compared to cities in Europe and Japan which have usually a very dense system of public transport. And this reduces the possible "starting points" for HSR in the USA to a handful of cities. Existing Infrastructure: Using existing tracks will keep costs low, especially in regions where land is expensive. Sometimes this will be the only opportunity if you don't want to build tunnels under populated areas. Only upgrade the tracks for higher velocities and add overhead lines. The constraints are, that the tracks should not have much curves and getting rid of all railroad-crossings. Also try to separate high speed passenger trains and freight trains. With using existing tracks it might not be possible to reach velocities of more than 125 mph. But this will be absolutely enough for two neighboring cities. New tracks and a higher velocity will be necessary if the network is extended to more distant cities. Beside the NEC I only see two possibilities where these conditions are fulfilled: Chicago - Milwaukee San Francisco - San Jose My choice would be San Francisco - San Jose. Although this seems to be too short for HSR, the political environment in California seems to be more promising and there is already a good rail service. First, build a 3rd and 4th track at full length between the two cities. Two tracks can be used for the trains stopping at every station, two tracks for the fast trains. It shouldn't be a problem to reach 100 mph at full length (except the curve near Brisbane, but a shortcut-tunnel would solve this), and there's a good chance to reach 125 mph south of Millbrae. With this, the travelling time between San Francisco and San Jose could be reduced to 30 minutes for through trains. Regional Express trains (similar to the baby bullets) with about five stops in between would need about 45 - 50 min. This gives enough capacity for two through-trains and two regional express trains per hour. But for a start one of each per hour would be sufficient. Additionally there are the local trains which stop at every station (perhaps there is money left to build a few more stations). And these trains are faster, too, because electric trains have a much better acceleration. I'm sure the cost for the track upgrade and the trains wouldn't exceed 10 billion. With the rest of the money build up a light rail system in San Jose and extend the Muni-Metro and Bart. Try to extend the local trains to Market Street by building a tunnel. And still you have the "old" diesel trains with which you can build up a service north and south of San Jose. Advantages of this solution are that you're not only spending the money for HSR, so more people will an improvement. The risk is quite low and this route will be part of a Californian HSR anyway.
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