I’m french, living in Paris. I’ve used HST for over two decades to go all over France, in Brussels, in London, even Netherlands. Journeys were private or professional ones. U cannot possibly know how comfortable it is to schedule a meeting in Lyon, leave Paris around 7:00 am , have an efficient day work with your clients and be back home around 7:00 pm. New TGV trains have laptop energy plugs (hope this is a correct word) and many people see the two hours trip as an opportunity to work and be prepared for their meetings, work, whatever.

We have 4 central stations in Paris that give access to HST railways, all connected to the subway network, three of them on the same subway lane. Major french cities are connected to the HST net, the ones (Toulouse for example) that have not yet access to the net fight hard to gain this opportunity asap. Business asks for it. Toulouse (which I know for having studied there) is about to have this connexion (through Bordeaux hub) in mid 2010’s and people can’t wait for it. Paris Toulouse takes today more than 5 hours by train. This will be shorten to about 3 hours.

Connexion with the Spanish HST is under discussion (crossing the Pyrenées Mountains east and going to Barcelona, or west with San Sebastian), Italian connexion is studied to put Torino just a few hours away from Paris. Eurostar, putting Paris and London in about 3 hours away (downtown to downtown) has completely changed the way Parisians and Londoners do business together. And Brussels in now less than 1h30 away from Paris. Three major capitals linked together with HST is a huge change. Europe is “smaller” and can act quicker.

I don’t have any advise to tell you but I know from my experience that this technology changed MY life. I live better, smarter and I travel more often for a smaller price than in the early 80’s. It’s not that I don’t like planes (god I like to fly!) but wasting my time in a short flight with going to the airport (30 min from Central Paris to Orly or Charles de Gaulle airports), waiting for my flight (at least 30 minutes, even more if I have luggages), and the same patience after the flight ? All of this to go to Marseille ? No way !

Don’t believe me blindly. Come here in France and try the SNCF – TGV system. U’ll have a few days off in a country that will seduce you (I hope) and see the comfort and efficiency of a travel in a HST. One last thing : TGV is one of many technologies available for HST. Japanese, German have their own. I’d be happy to see french technology used in the USA but it’s not the point. Choose the one u want but I’m pretty sure your life will deeply change using a high speed transportation system.

I’m in California and use various train services (SFMuni + BART) regularly. Sometimes you’ve got to do things in stages. The previous poster that talked about the difficulties of tying Union Station together left out the furballs that would be triggered by such an effort. The cut and cover tunneling of the Market Street Subway and BART’s Mission Street bore were monster headaches to plan and very painful in their execution. The distance in Chicago may seem short but I expect the infighting will be epic.

So SNCF, given this business model, is cherry picking — picking out the routes that, given the proposals that have been talked about, have the best shot at making money. California, there’s a huge government commitment to high speed rail. The Midwest and Florida, you have flat geography and wide rights of way and therefore the possibility of doing HSR on the cheap, at least in relative terms to California.

As for Chicago, it’s a bit of a barrier, but here’s what’s proposed, and then I’ll go on to add what they ought to do.

THe city has proposed a “West Loop Transportation Center”. This would involve digging up Clinton Street and installing multiple levels of infrastructure — high speed rail platforms, a new subway line (the Clinton Street subway), a busway and a pedestrian concourse linking Union and Ogilvie stations. It’s a good start, but only a start because two HSR platforms won’t be enough in a finished system.

So the city needs to find some way to mate the two halves of Union Station. At present, the 222 Riverside Plaza building and the former CMEX change (now a health club) block the way and the passenger concourse sits in the basement between the two sets of tracks. The Riverside Plaza building is immense, more than a million square feet of prime office space, and therefore not cheap to buy out. The former CMEX structure is more easily expendable. But if you were to gut out the Riverside building up to about third floor level and remove the CMEX building altogether, you’d create the opportunity of having an above-ground passenger concourse over the tracks, and through tracks below.

There’s still the matter of the bottleneck at the north end of the station where the only way of adding to the three tracks that are there is with massive demolition of high rises, so in reality, probably both West Loop AND through platforms in the main station are needed if we’re to have a truly high-capacity system.