<Jordan Hayes>-----
> >> Maybe that's because the longest distance from Tokyo anywhere
> >> is about 500 miles?
> >
> > indeed it is very similar to what i experienced in france
>
> ... where there's no where that's more than 420 miles from Paris?
so what about the high speed train networks in areas < to 400 miles in the us ? do they exist ? are they competing with planes ? how connected are they to the plane system ?
you make it sound like above a certain distance everybody in the us takes the plane because it is so much more convenient. obviously it is not true. obviously only a very few people actually enjoy this very american way of travelling. the fact that bus/trains are not connected enough is the major pain for the american transportation system. ie the fact that the state invested heavily in japan and france (and other countries in europe) to provide the country with a safe and 'universal' public transportation system is the main difference with the us. it is not about size but about how many people you want to have enjoy the travel time reduction.
another hint is the density of population: in denser areas the connectivity gets higher. check how many people take public transportation inside tokyo (10,000,000 residents) or inside the tokyo area (40,000,000 residents). how many airports do you think you can build there ? how many landing/taking off planes are people living there going to accept as the price necessary to pay for 'fast access' to places where they can get by train. don't you have areas where fast train connection would actually compete with planes ?
airports are saturated in europe. and there are discussions to reorganize the nb of flights on the _european_ level. if you think europe you get a better picture of what is going on the national level. the french tgv is in swiss, in belgium, in germany, in england. it is becoming the de-facto standard of confortable/convenient/high speed/clean transportation.
>
> C'mon, Seattle -> Miami is 2700 miles by air, 3300 by car; LAX->BOS is
> 2590 by air, 2990 by car; SFO-JFK is 2590 by air, 2900 by car ...
i know people who live in the country side in france and have about 1.5 h train ride to work/school everyday same in japan (where you don't call it the country side but the suburbs...) it seems to me that people who live in seattle don't go to miami on a daily basis. only a certain class of people take this trip often enough to make it profitable. the fact that there are profitable plane routes between the cities you mention does not prove that fast train in the 400 miles range around those cities would not make it easier for the average american.
>
> Baghdad is closer to Paris than any of these city pairs are to each
> other.
and there is definitely very bad transportation connectivity in bagdad.
jc helary