Actually it could be quite cheap, if you hired Mexicans.

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No loyalty towards the EU.

In Russia is freedom of speech. In America is also freedom after speech. -- Yakov Smirnoff

While I do agree with you about the feasibility of subterranean high speed rail, I highly doubt your numbers afterwards.

I guess it bases on the senseless assumption to connect the entire US with high speed trains like it was done with conventional trains a century ago. If thats the assumption behind the number its a straw man. No one plans that or demands that.

The point is rather to connect all cities with each other per high speed rail where the basic criterias are met. Principally as a rough rule one could say that high speed is highly competible where the cities can be connected within 4 hours, its still feasible up to 6 hours I think. If more cities are following one to each other, the network can be enlarged far beyond that restriction though, because every conglomeration can have the potential for itself.

Actually you could connect a quite substantial numbers of US cities while meeting those criteria. Of course there will be no Atlantic-Pacific crossing built, but thats not the task anyway.

For such a realistic task there can be impossibly the need for 500 times of the yearly federal budget, unless your federal budget is a joke. The reason why I believe that is that Europe was able to build up in the somewhat 30 last years a substantial high speed network without spending an extremely large part of its budget (even though it spend a certain amount of course) on high speed rail.


PS:
For all who are interested into it. Here is the best map of the European high speed network, its incomplete but still pretty good

http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q...rnEurope20.gif

Also tunnels would be much more expensive to maintain than simple surface railroad. When speaking about high speed rail network - there were already locomotives 50 years ago that could reach 200km/h, the problem was always track quality, reliability, maintenance cost of such high speed railway.

There is also high speed connection between Prague, Bratislava and Wien via Pendolino, although its top speed is only ~200km/h. Probably higher speed is not needed right now.

__________________
No loyalty towards the EU.

In Russia is freedom of speech. In America is also freedom after speech. -- Yakov Smirnoff

Doesn't it make you proud to see that such a supposedly advanced and sophisticated nation as Austria has such a dense high speed rail network? Seriously, didn't we want to move freight traffic from the road to the rail like 10 years ago?

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I have heard of the Pendolino but actually I have never seen one in Vienna. I just know that the train connections to all new EU memberstates are pretty bad. The connection to Bratislava for sure is at least. The rail line towards Prague would also need a modernization I guess.

Actually high speed rail lines would have large potential in central Europe, with so many larger cities in a relative vicinity. But to which railwaystation are they heading at? Maybe to the South Station, I hardly ever get to that one.

Anyway, I looked at the ÖBB homepage and the faster connections there were 4 hours long. For roughly estimated 300 km thats not an extremely fast connection in fact. An thoroughly upgraded 200 km line should manage a travel time of not more than 2 hours for express trains. A true high speed line could manage it in somewhat 1 and a half hour.

I guess the reason why no central European high speed network is in the make is because its so fractured with all this small countries and no ambition so far to join up forces for this aim. The potential from a geographic point of view might be there however.

I thought in the year 2000 we will all have personal space ships.

Ehm anyway, I actually follow the development of the Austrian rail network. No need to say its a rather depressing hobby

The new track between St. Pölten and Wien Hauptbahnhof will be very cool however. Cutting travel times from 3/4 hour to 23 minutes or so. Imagine when you could reach the pedestrian zone in St. Pölten faster than the Viennese Volksoper from the pedestrian zone in Favoriten. Thats how it will be in few years from now, I think from 2012 onwards.

Another great and really really extremely overdue project is the modernisation of the main railway station in St. Pölten. It was the single Austrian station that could compete with the Südbahnhof for the worst station in Austria, and its my opinion that the Südbahnhof only one the contests regularely because it affected a larger amount of people.

I just had a look at the map, and saw Pendolino travels directly from Prague to Wien via Brno. If you can get to Bratislava by car in less than 1 hour, then it must take less by a train traveling at 200km/h. I estimate it could take 30 minutes or less.

4 hours to Prague by high speed train is too much. It should take less than 3 hours. By highway, Wien is 70km away from Bratislava, by air distance its only 50km.

The problem was there were 4 different railway companies, and 3 different power systems. Now that OBB bought Hungarian railways, its "only" 3 railway companies. Since OBB overpaid for the Hungarian railways, it is unlikely that it will make more acquisitions soon, and we don't want to sell ours anyway . People are tired of selling state run companies to foreign companies since most of the time it means increased costs.

__________________
No loyalty towards the EU.

In Russia is freedom of speech. In America is also freedom after speech. -- Yakov Smirnoff

I found a link to Praha Wien connection -> SC Pendolino

There you can see it is 405km from Praha-Holešovice to Wien Südbahnhof. Travel time is 4h 5m which is quite a lot. The only explanation is that certain parts of tracks are not yet usable for top speed. All stops take mostly 2 minutes.

__________________
No loyalty towards the EU.

In Russia is freedom of speech. In America is also freedom after speech. -- Yakov Smirnoff

Oh, I see. I guess the additional 100 km derive from the fact that the line is not perfectly straight between Praha-Brno-Wien

But also with 400 km a time below or around 2 hours should be feasible with high speed lines.

I guess that the Pendolino is only able to drive at top speed on certain parts of the track.

The European train system is not a subterrainian system and my $80 million per mile number came from a recent US underground rail system (I forgot which one) and was the actual costs.

Japan also has highspeed rail but they did not attempt to build it underground. The costs of underground work are very prohibitive and dangerous from a construction standpoint.