I remember riding on the Japanese "Bullet Train" (or Shinkansen) when I was a kid and being thoroughly impressed by its speed and general niceness inside. I remember the beautiful box lunches you could buy too. More recently I've been on the Amtrak to and from Boston and NYC. Quite a different experience.I realize there are many reasons preventing us from developing high speed rails in certain parts of the country. Some areas are just too densely populated to allow for stretches of rail long enough to let a train speed along at 200+ mph. Some people just think not enough people would use it, preferring to just fly longer distances. But I also get the feeling there's a very political reason for not investing in them. I'd love to see the day that I can ride a frictionless Maglev train from Boston to NYC in 2 hour.
One of the big problems with train service in this country is that passenger service of Amtrack does not own it's own track, but uses commercial frieght tracks. When push comes to shove the frieght trains get priority. I found this out recently when my mother had to go through 10 hrs of delay riding from MI to KY.
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