Comment Re:Another Thought: Amtrak & Japanese Technolo (Score 2, Insightful) 539
Whenever the subject of trains is brought up here or anywhere else, someone claims that trains will never work in the US because of its population density. But the fact is that the population density of the US as a whole is meaningless. Rail lines do not need to be built equally spread out around the entire country; they can be built in the parts of the country where it makes the most sense.
The land area from Boston to DC is about 120 million square miles (including all of NY, PA, NJ, MA, CT, MD, RI, DC). The population is about 55 million, concentrated mostly in metropolitan areas. France has a nearly the same population with about twice the land area. Germany has a comparable population (80 million), and about the same area. Both France and Germany have train service far superior to that in the northeast. Clearly, it it not the population density that is preventing good train service there.
Similar arguments apply to other areas of the US. There are about 40 million people concentrated along the west coast. There's no reason, in terms of population density, that train service could not flourish there.
