The midwest is so overlooked when it comes to HSR, the potential of St.Paul-Milwaukee-Chicago-Indianapolis- Louisville-Nashville
This is just a sample of what we could do if we pursued this fucking obvious corridor and made logical connections to it
nah most of these destinations would be more than fine with with mere 110/125 mph corridors like several east coast cities have for commuter rail service.
especially serving things like sub-50k population towns in minnesota (new ulm? really??? that aint even a particularly good direction to go for further service to the west after...) or upgrading service for those illinois service branches.
you get a whole lot more real service for your money if you don't chase the over 125 mph dragon for little spur routes. obviously you'll build and take land for a cheap upgrade to higher speed tiers later on, but you can barely budge real travel times for so many of these 70-100 mile branches by going higher than 110. too much time accelerating and decelerating at stations in corridors where express service on such a line would not really be justifiable in time savings vs people served!
honestly even 80 mph on some of those would be perfectly fine -but you should simply never be building passenger rail that would get rated under 80 if you can avoid that!
also hey i just noticed. why does this totally avoid a route linking up rochester mn, which could very definitely use a branch. that's a much bigger city in its own right and metropolitan area overall than the new ulm-mankato area! and ofc with all the mayo clinic stuff it has a lot of interstate travelers to it that could do with rail service.
The idea was the Purple line was the high speed line and all the other colors were regional lines at around 70-80 mph
