We desperately need more investment in regional mass transit. That's not the market Amtrak serves. I'm not convinced we need to invest more on inter-city passenger trains. Of the most popular city pairs for flights, probably only Los Angels <-> Las Vegas makes sense for a rail trip, but LA is so sprawling and lacking in regional mass transit that getting to any train station would probably take away any advantage.
Dallas to Houston is, I believe, the most popular short-haul flight route in the US (maybe SF-LA beats it, but it's up there), and the geography/distance makes so much sense for a high speed rail that a private company, Texas Central, has secured private capital and is working with the government to bring a Japanese-style Shinkansen to Texas. The station locations have already been secured in downtown Dallas and Houston, and groundbreaking is tentatively set for next year.
A 90 minute train ride connecting Texas' largest two cities? Compared to the 4hr trip a car takes or ~2hr for a plane (factoring in security)? At a (tentative) price point of ~two tanks of gas?
I'm optimistic that it won't only be a commercial success, but also that it will convince people (and politicians) that a HSR-network is in the public's best interest, even for routes that don't necessarily make sense from a commercial (private) perspective.
I don’t see commuter rail speeds increasing much in the US. If the LIRR, Metro North, and Jersey Transit could have effective speeds (i.e. station to station) of even 60 miles an hour it would be a game changer for the US’ largest and most economically important metro area.
Alas, that’s a pipe dream, much less bringing New Haven or Philadelphia into the reasonable commuting radius which is what I suspect you are alluding to.
I'm a West-Coaster so am not sure why that would be so impossible a task. What stops us in the Bay Area is heavy diesel trains and lots of stops with no passing tracks, and I understand we're working on fixing all of those issues, slowly though we may progress.
I keep hoping we'll get SLC <-> LA via Las Vegas. We have commuter rail from SLC down about 100 miles, and there are some fairly popular destinations along that route that could benefit from train access (lots of National and State parks, St. George is a popular retirement and vacation destination, etc).
But to be viable, it has to be competitive with airline travel, and that means fast trains. It currently costs more to go from SLC <-> SF than by airplane, and it takes a full day (18 hours or so, I forget exactly) to get there vs 2 hours or so by airplane and 10 hours by car. If it was 4-6 hours (120-200mph), it would be competitive with airlines if you take into account security and baggage on both ends. I know I would take Amtrak if that were the case, but for now, I'm only going to take it as a vacation in itself.
There are a lot of companies in CA that have offices in Utah now, so improving the train system between them may make sense if they can get speeds to be reasonable.
So, you're either blasting a giant gap in the Sierras, blasting a giant tunnel under the Sierras, or have some novel HSR technology that'll run over the Sierras.
For a much less useful route, it'll probably be more expensive than the actual full proposed CA HSR system.
Not saying it is worth it, but I did want to point out a massive tunnel below mountains has been done before[1]. The Gotthard tunnel train below the Alps cost about $12 billion to tunnel about 35 miles. Pretty awesome engineering.
For reference, the LA<->SFO train was last estimated about $75-100 billion to complete before it was canceled. Of course, there's almost no way anyone could build such a train tunnel in the USA for the same price as they did in Switzerland.
