Here’s a few problems with that take:

• A) This railway network being discussed is going to be built sixty odd years ago. That is enough time for areas of value to form around the nodes, turning the rail network into an investment into future cities.

• B) What is the direct revenue of the US interstate highway network?

• No seriously, how much money enters the US budget from the Interstate highways directly? I don’t care about facilitated development n stuff, I care only and purely about the direct revenue. If profitability is the point, or the measure of success of transportation system, then freeways - which are, by definition, free at the point of use - are a terrible return on investment and are better off never built.

• Meanwhile, for one, railway is in this interesting position that as you go faster, it becomes more profitable. And for two, if the US were to invest in high speed rail at the level at which it has in highways, then they would probably run it in a way where, similarly to the highway network, availability and service are more important than profit.

• C) Nobody commutes from Bumfuck, VA to Nowhere, OR. Even in the US, commuting is a regional affair.

• A NYC - Chicago - LA high speed rail is not for those major cities exclusively. It is for all the city pairs of places between those cities. It would chain together decent city pairs with a continuing railway line. NY - Chicago would at least stop in Philly, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Fort Wayne. Many of those appear to be a good rail distance apart. In fact, Chicago and Cleveland are a great distance for HSR. Too far to comfortably drive to do anything in a day before returning, and so close that a flight would still be dominated by stuff on the ground. That is the sweet spot for high speed rail.

• D) The US is quite literally built by the railways and bulldozed for the car. Many places in the western half of the contiguous 48 exist because the railroads bought out huge tracts of land to their west, developed some space into towns, and sold that land, now valuable thanks to the connections offered by the rails, to interested buyers. Then shit was torn down because facilitating parking for a small city centre requires about three quarters of the land being dedicated to storing cars. Houston, TX in the '20s had a great city centre. In the '70s, downtown was a parking lot and little has fundamentally changed since.

• E) Speaking of land made valuable, the US manages valuable land terribly. Single family housing is notoriously expensive to run, yet it’s practically the only housing being built. Big box stores are fickle and could become worthless to city budgets at the whim if one business, while the same area of multiple small businesses is both more resilient and more financially productive.

• Add to that the fact that if a big box store goes out of business, too many US places just leave it there to gather dust while building something new down the road. If land was used more productively, the store would be torn down and the new thing would be built in its place.

• All of that is to say that “tHe UsA iS tOo BiG” is restating the problem. You cannot take the problem, put it into different words, and then say that as the gotcha as to why structural problems cannot be solved.