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Originally Posted by djtestudo
They were talking about Amtrak on local radio a few weeks ago, and I actually had a brainstorm. Why can't thy copy the NE Corridor in other places? I would be willing to bet that high-speed trains between San Francisco and San Diego, and possibly along the Great Lakes and Southeast regions, would be profitable enough. Anywhere there is a series of major cities they could do it.
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Because Amtrak doesn't own the rail in those areas. In other parts of the country, they are dependent on rail owned by freight companies. That rail does not meet the safety requirements necessary to run high-speed trains. Until Amtrak somehow gets more money and manages to build their own rail, it won't happen.
In the PacNW, the Amtrak Cascades (short-run passenger train, Eugene-Portland-Seattle-Vancouver) is run by a partnership between ODOT, WSDOT, and Amtrak. WSDOT ponied up a bunch of money to fix up the track that Cascades runs on, including improvements such as banking the track. But even so, the top speed of that train (and they're running Spanish Talgo cars, capable of high speeds) is 70mph for safety reasons.
Until either the safety laws change (they're really rather unnecessarily strict) or Amtrak gets more help from individual states ala Washington, developing more advanced corridors will be difficult at best.