High-speed rail

Roger Cohen, in an otherwise decent column that advocates letting the automakers go the way of the dodo, concludes with this:

Rather than adopting European subsidies, put billions toward more inspiring European examples: a high-speed railroad network or universal health care.

Beyond health care, something many American leftists love about Europe is the continents high-speed rail system that whisks them from one European capital to another with relative ease. It makes them wonder why we don't have it here in the U.S.

Here's why:

For high-speed rail to succeed to need at least two key ingredients: relatively short distances (over long distances rail can't compete with airlines) and population density (it's not economically viable to shuttle people from Topeka to Tulsa, you need large numbers of customers to achieve the economies of scale and compensate for the high sunk costs).

As one can see from this map, Europe has it and we don't -- with the lone exception of the Boston-NYC-DC corridor. Even here, however, Amtrak manages to lose money. Perhaps the answer, however, is simply to privatize it -- but then I suspect removing the government would take the fun out of it for a lot of people.