A recent CNBC feature attempts to explain the absence of high-speed Passenger Rail in the United States.
The presentation is uneven: the oil and motor vehicle lobbies get excessive credit for their influence-peddling; the convenience of the personal motor vehicle compared with the horse or even the motor bus influencing government policy makers to direct their internal improvements accordingly receives less attention. In addition, mainland China's ability to trample on property rights to run railroads wherever the government wants is treated simply as a fact, not the absence of moral rights for citizens that it involves. (And those Chinese high speed trains stand on pillars of concrete, the manufacture of which produces a lot of carbon dioxide and smog.)
Toward the end of the clip, Virgin Rail's Brightline appears. One of the project managers notes that trains running at 110 mph top speeds don't require a grade-separated right of way, and the trains are almost as fast as the 220 mph counterparts. The math is straightforward. You might think that if a train given a top speed of 110 mph can cover the 85 miles between Chicago and Milwaukee in 55 minutes, the 220 mph train can do it in under a half hour. Sorry, no, because you're using more right of way getting up to speed and decelerating; and you might be blowing past the airport or Sturtevant or Chicago so as to exploit those higher cruising speeds. You're also building a railroad from scratch, rather than exploiting the capability of an existing railroad. The Milwaukee Road and Florida East Coast had capabilities for running fast a long time ago.
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