I'm an American. I love trains. I have my entire life. Trains don't make economic sense in a country so widely spread apart with an 150-year-old rail system al

I'm an American. I love trains. I have my entire life. Trains don't make economic sense in a country so widely spread apart with an 150-year-old rail system almost completely dedicated to freight. Especially where right-of-way and planning issues can cause simple interstate highway extensions to take decades and billions of dollars to build out. I'm not saying we couldn't have high-speed trains if we wanted them. If we wanted, we could probably have all sorts of things. I'm saying that building such things only makes sense if we have some sort of nationwide insecurity complex that we would need to address by riding around in cool-looking trains. We do not. Creating another construction boondoggle for relatives of connected politicians shouldn't be high on our list of things to do. We have a much better shot at creating entirely new infrastructure grids, like the hyperloop. We should look into creating a few experimental long-distance hyperloops instead of trying to take existing infrastructure (physical, social, and technology infrastructure) and beat on it with a hammer until it looks like we want. This would be even more successful if a company clearly outlined the conditions it would take to succeed and various government bodies could then determine whether they could meet these conditions -- which is pretty much the way Google fiber is rolling out.