High-speed rail sounds like a good idea on paper: Trains are quicker, more comfortable and often more convenient than cars if you’re traveling a couple of hundred miles. So why not develop a system similar to that of Europe or Japan? The only problem is cost: how much would be needed to build this network, will people be able to afford it, and could it have enough passengers each year to avoid an indefensible deficit?

I would personally take the train up to New York from DC much more often if it didn’t cost so much. It takes nearly as long as a car ride and costs nearly as much as a plane ticket. So it’s tough to make the argument for nationwide rail on a purely economic basis.

The Obama administration is pushing for high-speed rail on the grounds that it’d “make travel in this country learner and a whole lot cleaner,” as the Vice President Joe Biden, a long-time Amtrak rider, said at a White House presser in April. But really their plan is about stimulus, and the White House has proposed $5 billion for high-speed rail for the fiscal year 2010 budget that draws from the $787 billion stimulus package.

Doing the administration’s bidding on this project is a group called America 2050 that has put together a National Infrastructure Investment Plan that heavily emphasizes high-speed rail connecting “Megaregions.” The group, which is supported by a handful of mega non-profits ranging from the Ford Foundation to the Rockefeller Foundation, has released a series of maps and data making their case.

They start with 11 Megaregions, about seven of which are mainly in blue states and about four of which rest mainly in red states (I’m counting Atlantic Piedmont as a red despite North Carolina and Florida as blue).

America 2050's Megaregions

America 2050 then lays out three phases for laying rail. Phase 1 establishes hubs in California, Chicago and the Northeast Corridor (what would Red State politicians say about this?). Phase 2 fans the Sun Belt, reaching out to cities like Vegas, San Diego, Phoenix, Tampa, Miami, Atlanta, Charlotte and Raleigh, as well as Seattle and Detroit. Phase 3 extends to large secondary cities like Indianapolis, Oklahoma City and Pittsburgh.

From a purely geographic perspective, I think America 2050 nails it and provides a plan that is light years ahead of what the White House released in April. From an economic perspective, the jury is still out about whether this could be financially sustainable.

In the YES camp, Infrastructurist hails the America 2050 plan, stating that they’ve “done a great deal in advancing the national conversation by putting together a report that ranks which potential HSR routes are the best candidates for investment.”

In the NO camp, Edward Glaeser at the Economix blog crunches and arrives at the conclusion that most rail routes would be hundreds of millions in the hole. “It’s cruel arithmetic faced by people, like myself, who would love to be pro-rail.”

I think Glaeser’s numbers don’t lie and that the folks at Infrastructurist and America 2050 need to provide some better figures about how high-speed rail would be funded and what it would bring in. Is the cost worth the investment?

I also have some qualms with the idea that it’s a wise investment in some regions. Realistically, how strong would traffic be between Detroit and Cleveland? I know the idea is to stimulate a depressed area but you can’t expect high-priced, high-speed rail service to revitalize a sprawling, empty city built for cars. One day we’re talking about bulldozing these cities, the next day we’re talking about investing hundreds of millions into infrastructure?

That being said, I’d like to see a high-speed rail route connecting the corridor between Boston and DC today. Demand is already high enough on this corridor to sustain ridership.