&gt;It&#x27;s easy to tell a pollster you&#x27;re for high speed rail but how many will actually buy a ticket? Perhaps they should ask for them to prepay for a ticket?<p>I use the MBTA on a fairly frequent basis.  I would use it every day if biking didn&#x27;t half my commute time.<p>I&#x27;ve also used Megabus to visit New York City, for day trips even, Acela for an interview in New York once, and a short domestic air flight to visit a friend in Washington DC for a weekend.  These costed ~$30, ~$200, and $500 for round trips, respectively.<p>Note that the bus takes almost five hours, the train takes four hours, and the airline flight took about two to three hours.  The bus and train were crossing the same distance between the same two cities, and a comparable air trip would have cost $450 for a 1 hour, 15 minute flight.<p>Why is the transit system structured so that by taking &quot;high-speed&quot; public transit over slower private transit, I reduce my trip by 20% but pay 9x more?  Why is it that if I actually want to travel quickly, I have to take a private transit agency (ie: JetBlue), and can quarter the time spent in transit by spending twice as much as the next-fastest option and 15x as much as the slowest option?<p>In particular, how can we talk about a so-called &quot;high-speed&quot; rail system in which the gap between driving and taking a train is only one hour but the cost gap is multiplication by nine?