It’s about need. Like yeah, Chicago through the Dakotas is easy as pie, but the demand would be to seattle and that crosses two mountain ranges and the only stops between Minnesota and Seattle with much demand there would be at national parks.
Like yeah it would be awesome as hell and the American version of the CCP would absofuckinglutely have a high speed rail to Yellowstone and the badlands since they’re on the way. But Yellowstone is past the start of the mountains and you need to connect all the way to seattle for it to be more than a vanity project.
The important lines are the NY-Chicago (land is dirt cheap for lots of it, mountains are small, and population is dense with several makor cities you can hit) and the west coast line (basically actually do California high speed rail, then extend it from San Diego to just outside British Columbia. From there the east coast line, something involving texas, or stretching the ny-chicago line is good.
The above map basically connects every major city in the country with a high speed rail route, makes it easy to travel by high speed rail from any major city in a region to any other major city in a rrhion and standard speed routes to connect some of the smaller major cities and provide alternate cross connections for less populad itineraries
It’s about need. Like yeah, Chicago through the Dakotas is easy as pie, but the demand would be to seattle and that crosses two mountain ranges and the only stops between Minnesota and Seattle with much demand there would be at national parks.
Like yeah it would be awesome as hell and the American version of the CCP would absofuckinglutely have a high speed rail to Yellowstone and the badlands since they’re on the way. But Yellowstone is past the start of the mountains and you need to connect all the way to seattle for it to be more than a vanity project.
The important lines are the NY-Chicago (land is dirt cheap for lots of it, mountains are small, and population is dense with several makor cities you can hit) and the west coast line (basically actually do California high speed rail, then extend it from San Diego to just outside British Columbia. From there the east coast line, something involving texas, or stretching the ny-chicago line is good.
The above map basically connects every major city in the country with a high speed rail route, makes it easy to travel by high speed rail from any major city in a region to any other major city in a rrhion and standard speed routes to connect some of the smaller major cities and provide alternate cross connections for less populad itineraries
There is already a rail south into California.