> In a thread 3 years ago, I made a list of the top US cities by GDP, That's really not a useful analysis, you could make the same sort of list of London, Berl

> In a thread 3 years ago, I made a list of the top US cities by GDP, That's really not a useful analysis, you could make the same sort of list of London, Berlin, Madrid, Turin, Istanbul, Dublin, Athens, Moscow, Budapest etc, and demonstrate that a high speed network is useless in Europe, but nevertheless it exists. You need to do the same with the 100 biggest cities, that's where the system is most effective. Of course, just as in Europe, most of the journeys will be better done by plane, that's not the point, high speed rail is just another option which is particularly useful for particular circumstances. It would be substantially less useful in the US than in Europe, because as you say the distances are greater, but it definitely seems like it should exist more than it does.