Actually the US had a good high speed rail system 100 years ago.

Reader comment on: Crimson Economics

Submitted by Lyle (United States), Mar 5, 2013 21:45

East of the Mississippi you had the Broadway Limited and the 20th century limited runing NYC to Chicago in 20 hours or so, at an average speed including stops of 60 mph, (there were 7 stops between NYC and Chicago).

In addition in the midwest you had the electric interurbans that covered large areas, and ran smaller trains than the steam railroads.

The interurbans and the long distance high speed rail were killed off by economics, the interurbans began to dissappear by 1920 and were essentally gone by WWII. (As indeed the pacific electric in Los Angeles was). Now one can argue about how the economics were managed, but the services all lost money. Clearly the market decided that they were not needed.

I never understand why someone has not provided reasons that now should be different than then.

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