No-one's suggesting cross-continent rail. The argument that US population densities are vastly below those in other countries is true on a country wide scale, b

No-one's suggesting cross-continent rail. The argument that US population densities are vastly below those in other countries is true on a country wide scale, but false when you look at the key population corridors. San Francisco to San Diego is approximately 500 miles. 24 million people live in that corridor.[1] Paris to Marseille is 481 miles. It takes about 3 hours and 16 minutes by train to make that journey. I'm not particularly adept at French, so finding corridor population details is difficult. However, judging by the population of the regions the train passes through [2], I'd estimate that (11.7, 1.6, 6.1 and 4.9) 24.3 million people live in that corridor. That's a really rather close number. Lack of high speed rail in the US is probably due to the auto companies removing the public transport that provides a feeder into that kind of system. The large spread out cities are a symptom of a car culture, not the other way around. [1]: http://www.slideshare.net/mmazner/ne-corridor-facts http://www.slideshare.net/mmazner/ne-corridor-facts [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_list_of_French_regions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_list_of_French_regions