My father told me a story about discontinuing a street car line (called an interurban) in a town North of Detroit.  There was a hearing at city hall and hundreds of villagers turned out.<p>Dozens of people made the case to keep the line.  Finally the street car company&#x27;s lawyer got up and made the business case for discontinuing the line.  He concluded by asking the crowd how many of you used our company&#x27;s street car to get to this meeting?  Not a single hand went up.<p>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?