the US is a lot more spread out than Japan or most of Europe.
you can pretty easily get from a place like NYC to Boston, Philadelphia, or Washington DC by train... but it really makes no sense to lay down thousands of miles of tracks across empty rural areas for a high speed rail from NYC to LA (at least based on current budgetary constraints, technology, potential usage, etc)
That's not what I said, we need a quality national network but not for cross country trips. Planes are for cross country. And "high speed" isn't necessary 60mph (city) - 200mph (interstate) is fine and can easily be done on standard track. There are several well populated states with absolutely no transit system of any kind.
Like Washington. Sure we pretend to have a bus system, and maybe a tram that goes nowhere...but there are like 6 major cities within 100 miles of each other and not even a single major highway that properly connects them. the major highways we do have are utter crap, laid out bad, poorly maintained and extremely congested.
At the same time I should be able to easily find and take a cheap train ride from say Seattle WA across the state to the Tri-Cities area or to say Portland OR.
In Japan they would have an express line that stops only at the major stops, here it would be like:
Olympia, Tacoma, Seatac, Seattle, Everett/Marysville, Mt Vernon/Burlington and Bellingham.
A mid-line that has stops between those, like say Lakewood, Fed Way, Renton, North Seattle/Mountlake Terrace, and Arlington
And a local line which makes more frequent stops or loops out to reach other populated side areas.
Like I could take a train from Olympia to Tacoma step off one train and right across the platform step onto the mid-line without leaving the station or changing tickets or anything and take it to a midway in say Fed Way.
From there I could hop on a local line that loops through Auburn, Enumclaw, Maple Valley, Covington, and Kent.
Or take a bus/cab that's timed up with, and directly from, the train station.
There are several other local loops they could make through well populated areas here as well.
From Olympia they could follow the major highway and have a train stop at Centralia, and Longview before hitting Portland. Could do a "local" loop out to the coast to grab Astoria and the other larger coastal towns in WA to connect back at Olympia. Another "local" loop that goes south from Astoria along the Oregon coast to hit their major cities. Most of Oregon is fairly well clustered as well.
Then you would drop a single line to California, which again is clustered and well populated. Run two lines across Nevada one stopping in Reno one in Las Vegas. From Reno head to Boise Idaho run a line through the rest of Oregon to the Tri-Cities area in Washington which would also loop back to Portland Grabbing the big towns on the Columbia.
Many of the less populated states you could follow a major highway and only grab the big towns. There's gonna be less track then there is road, and it's cheaper to place and maintain, is more efficient and faster than cars and is more convenient for travelers.
I could keep going, but a decent rail system in America is very possible and would be very useful. On top of the fact that you can easily fit additional lines alongside for little extra cost and use them for freight etc.
Our current rail system is extremely outdated and poorly utilized. If we hadn't thrown away billions of dollars to the garbage companies that put us into a recession we could have used that money to build new quality transit stations and develop a simple easy to use rail system that connects with local transportation companies to start this new national system. Then start revamping and adding to current lines while building out new lines to fill in all the big missing gaps. Hell the national highway system is one of the things that pulled us out of the last recession.
Hiring all the unemployed to work on this new infrastructure along with the increase in commerce, manufacturing, and other benefits would make it economically viable.
I know I'm ranting and it's unlikely anybody is going to read all this, care about it, or agree with it...and it accomplishes nothing even if they do, so I'm just gonna stop now.