> The Eurostar takes <2h30 hours from London to Paris. American railways cannot support those speeds, though. The American rail infrastructure was primarily bu

> The Eurostar takes <2h30 hours from London to Paris. American railways cannot support those speeds, though. The American rail infrastructure was primarily built for cargo, and supports speeds of 50-70 miles per hour. > That's fine, but a total strawman related to the argument you quoted. The St. Paul to Chicago example was referencing the North Coast Hiawatha in your previous post. You mentioned that some people would only take a small segment of the line, not the entire Seattle to Chicago route. You wrote, "Very few people would be taking it all the way - it took ~47 hours." What specific destinations were you referring to here? > As I've elaborated on at length elsewhere, even the lowest population density states in the US have only exceptionally tiny numbers of people in areas where that is true when compared to existing lines considered viable in Europe. This is patently false. Take California, for instance. The vast majority of the state's 40 million people live in the San Francisco Bay Area and LA - San Diego metro areas. This would be 5-7 hours by rail, but only an hour long flight. Los Angeles to Seattle would be 10+ hours. These aren't places withs small populations. But the metro areas that do exist are far away from one another. Too far to make trains viable for passenger travel. This isn't unique to the west coast. Take St. Louis as another example. The other big metros in its vicinity are Nashville, Kansas city, and Indianapolis. These are all 5+ hours by train but just a 1 hour flight. The cities are spaced out too far to compete with airlines. Few would opt for a 5+ hour plane ride instead of a 1 hour flight. And people who would choose the former are instead served by Greyhound buses that don't take much longer than passenger rail. Again, the only place in America that does have a collection of large cities close together - the Northeast Corridor - has a widely used train line. The rest of America has cities spaced out further than the 100-200 miles where trains outcompete planes. > The US has areas not considered viable due to US political considerations. That's a choice for the US public to make, but this is not because US geography or demographics is exceptional, but because US politics is. False, it is absolutely due to geography and distance, not politics. This is one of the most clear-cut examples of geography influencing transportation choices.