The comment about air travel being the real competitor is right on the money.

Survey after survey has shown that people would much rather take a train (where they can get on easily, walk around during travel, not get slapped suddenly into their seats for an impromptu ride on the biggest roller coaster on the planet, drink a beer or eat a sandwich for a reasonable price, not have to wait in long lines for a restroom, and "land" within a short cab ride of their actual destination) than suffer through the growing indignities of air travel. Even adding in proper security screening, it's still no contest. But the obstacle to high speed rail is economic and political -- the extensive government subsidies to auto travel are dwarfed by those offered to private commercial air carriers (the whole TSA thing, but also the airports themselves and air traffic control, not to mention the weather service and other such incidentals that are nominally for other purposes). Investment in high speed rail directly undercuts the most lucrative air travel market: short haul trips. That's why the hub and spoke system all the air carriers use exists, and why you can hardly ever find a direct flight to where you're going if you aren't lucky enough to live in a hub (but also notice that if you leave directly from a hub, you'll pay a big mark-up compared to people who are simply transferring there).

So the bottom line is that there is a gigantic, lucrative industry whose whole existence depends on never having effective rail transportation (such as high-speed rail that connects urban areas as well as major airports and provides competitive, timely, cost-effective, weather-insensitive service for trips ranging from 200-500 miles). So you've got a bunch of noble idealists without a dime to their name lobbying for high speed rail, and you've got all the airlines hell-bent on preventing it from (so to speak) getting off the ground. It's a miracle the current administration thinks they can beat those odds, and I wish them all the best. But this is sort of like trying to outflank the medical industry with health care reform, and unfortunately there's probably just as little chance of substantial success.

I moved to Richmond, Virginia last summer. I lived in an apartment for 6 months, where I had DSL from Verizon. I bought a house and moved two miles, into an older middle class neighborhood. DSL is now out of the question (digital loop doohicky in the way, even though this is right next to a big commercial area and lots of well-off neighborhoods). Comcast is the only wired alternative, and it costs twice as much as DSL used to. So I'm left choosing between dial-up and some raggedy startup wireless broadband service...

As for the FIOS, one of my neighbors from my previous apartment was sharing a place with three of his friends: they were from El Salvador, and they were here working (legally) for a Verizon sub-sub-sub-contractor digging trenches for the fiber optics cables. He got crushed when a backhoe slid into the ditch and pinned him. He was airlifted to the hospital, in intensive care for three days, and out of work for two months. His church friends were working with a lawyer to sue for some kind of compensation, since his employer was arguing that he should have to pay the hospital bill himself ($47,000), and meanwhile the employer wasn't paying him a dime in workers compensation, sick leave or anything else. Naturally, Verizon has nothing to do with any of that.

You can say what you will about unions, but I doubt any union worker would suffer as that guy has.