NYC is the largest city in the US and the economic capital. DC is the political capital. Both are huge tourist destinations. There are myriad reasons people travel between them. Minneapolis to Detroit, much less so. The 16 non stop flights (8 each way) between Detroit and Minneapolis probably cover most the needs without an infrastructure project that would cost tens or hundred of billions of dollars.
Since when do we only connect the largest city and the capital? If that's what we did, there would be no trains in France because Paris is basically the only economically important city in the whole country.
Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis and their metro areas together have $900 billion in GDP (about 1/3 the whole GDP of France) and several dozen Fortune 500 companies. There aren't three cities together anywhere in France that have comparable economic importance.[1] Yet, there are trains between a whole bunch of these French cities.
[1] France's second largest city, Lyon, has about the same GDP as Milwaukee or Kansas City.
Because of their unique positions of power, NYC and DC are useful to connect. Minneapolis and Detroit are already connected by rail, train, bus, and car. If you want to spend a hundred billion dollars, the you need to justify it by showing that there some pent up demand for travel along the route, or some gross inefficiency that HSR will correct. GDP isn't a statistic you can substitute for number of daily trips. It is ultimately about how many people ride the train vs how much it costs, right?
One of the major observations about transport is that it's a "build it and they will come" sort of thing. Creating efficient transport links can create demand for travel (just as how if you build more roads, people drive more).
GDP is a better thing to look at then current demand because it gives you an idea of the economic capacity of the region to create demand for travel, on the presumption that demand for travel is intrinsically roughly proportional to economic activity. It's a counter-point to the common refrain that American cities are insufficiently dense and near to support high speed rail. If I can get a high speed train from Frankfurt (GDP: $220 billion) to Paris (GDP: $560 billion), distance 460 miles, why can't I get a high speed train from Detroit (GDP: $250 billion) to Chicago (GDP: $570 billion), distance 280 miles? Why would the demand for travel between the latter pair of cities be intrinsically lower than the demand for travel between the former pair?
The larger point is that while the U.S. may be too big to support HSR criss-crossing from NYC to LA or Atlanta to Seattle, it is divided into several mega-regions, each of which have economic density not that different from that of European countries.
Boston-NYC-PHL-DC, Vancouver-Seattle-Portland, Detroit-Chicago-Minneapolis, Birmingham-Atlanta-Raleigh, even Houston-Dallas-Oklahoma City all link population centers that are roughly the same size and same distance apart as major European cities.
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NYC is the largest city in the US and the economic capital. DC is the political capital. Both are huge tourist destinations. There are myriad reasons people travel between them. Minneapolis to Detroit, much less so. The 16 non stop flights (8 each way) between Detroit and Minneapolis probably cover most the needs without an infrastructure project that would cost tens or hundred of billions of dollars.
Since when do we only connect the largest city and the capital? If that's what we did, there would be no trains in France because Paris is basically the only economically important city in the whole country.
Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis and their metro areas together have $900 billion in GDP (about 1/3 the whole GDP of France) and several dozen Fortune 500 companies. There aren't three cities together anywhere in France that have comparable economic importance.[1] Yet, there are trains between a whole bunch of these French cities.
[1] France's second largest city, Lyon, has about the same GDP as Milwaukee or Kansas City.
Because of their unique positions of power, NYC and DC are useful to connect. Minneapolis and Detroit are already connected by rail, train, bus, and car. If you want to spend a hundred billion dollars, the you need to justify it by showing that there some pent up demand for travel along the route, or some gross inefficiency that HSR will correct. GDP isn't a statistic you can substitute for number of daily trips. It is ultimately about how many people ride the train vs how much it costs, right?
One of the major observations about transport is that it's a "build it and they will come" sort of thing. Creating efficient transport links can create demand for travel (just as how if you build more roads, people drive more).
GDP is a better thing to look at then current demand because it gives you an idea of the economic capacity of the region to create demand for travel, on the presumption that demand for travel is intrinsically roughly proportional to economic activity. It's a counter-point to the common refrain that American cities are insufficiently dense and near to support high speed rail. If I can get a high speed train from Frankfurt (GDP: $220 billion) to Paris (GDP: $560 billion), distance 460 miles, why can't I get a high speed train from Detroit (GDP: $250 billion) to Chicago (GDP: $570 billion), distance 280 miles? Why would the demand for travel between the latter pair of cities be intrinsically lower than the demand for travel between the former pair?
The larger point is that while the U.S. may be too big to support HSR criss-crossing from NYC to LA or Atlanta to Seattle, it is divided into several mega-regions, each of which have economic density not that different from that of European countries.
Boston-NYC-PHL-DC, Vancouver-Seattle-Portland, Detroit-Chicago-Minneapolis, Birmingham-Atlanta-Raleigh, even Houston-Dallas-Oklahoma City all link population centers that are roughly the same size and same distance apart as major European cities.