> By the way, have you ever spent 24 hours on a train? I've done
> overnight trips of 15+ hours in Europe, even on 'luxury' trains, and you
> don't arrive fresh and rested. You arrive cranky and rumpled.
I spent considerably more than that: nearly 6 days on the Trans-siberian line (during the good old Soviet imes) and arrived in Moscow quite refreshed - but I had the first class sleeper. I also spent 3 days on the NYC -Oakland, CA line in a coach - it was not as comfortable as the trans-siberian first class sleeper but still better than most long haul flights which may last "only" 10-12 hours, but are exhausting as hell especially when you travel in the stowage aka "economy" class.
But what really surprises me, Jordan, is that a smart guy like yourself misses the forest among the trees altogether. Perhaps that is what smart people do - they get distracted by technical details and miss the obvious lying right before their eyes.
To put things bluntly - noone in his right mind would advocate long haul train rides - even those much shorter than the trans-siberaian line. The competitive advantage of trains is short-to-medium distance travel (say, up to 200 miles) and their connectedness to other modes of transportation, such as airplane, local transit, or private cars. Therefore, a good transportation system would be multi-modal one - each mode well connected to - and supplementing each other. Europe has such a system, the US does not and it is not because of geography but because of politics. The same pertains to other services, such as health care, education, or telecommunications.
The main reason why the US sucks is the neo-liberal politics of its owners and ruling elites, not because of its geography or size. Those neo-liberal politics are manifested in every aspect of everyday life, especially in public services or rather lack thereof. There is no 'dense public transit system in the US - even what you find in NYC or New Jersey is quite pathetic considering the size of the population which equals that of many European states - period. For that matter, the highway system also sucks given to the task of being the sole ground transportation mode of the third most populous nation on Earth.
Let me repeat that, lest you miss that point. The US auto-based transport system sucks, because it is grossly inadequate for the task it is supposed to perform. No Us interstate highway can even compare to German Autobahn in terms of the quality of construction, overall design, traffic control etc. Even a second-rate European capital like Dublin can afford an efficient traffic control system (e.g. signs informing about parking availability or road conditions) - which the US roads generally lack, despite pathetic efforts to install them. If such devices were installed, they are largely serve as "terror alert warning system." That is below pathetic.
What is more, the US public service delivery sucks not because the US has different geography or is lacking the technological know-how, but because the owners and ruling elites of this country designed it that way for political purposes. So much has been written about politics of technology, land use etc. that anyone who doubts that the pathetic state of the US public services - not just transit, but any public service - has any other than political reasons is deluding himself.
Wojtek