We have come through an era of extreme luxury. One of seemingly endless choices and the resultant psychology that we truly are in charge of everything to do with our destiny. All we have to do is decide what it is we want, and that will become the new reality. We have attributed this recent reality mostly to our own brilliance, but it is more truly the result of a massive excess of easy non-renewable resource energy being injected into the system.

In an era of dwindling resources, how "receptive" people are to an idea will matter less and less. Once we no longer have the means to sustain our unsustainable illusions, we will be back to a world of opportunities constrained by real resources, not paper ones. At that point, merely wanting certain options over others won't make them attainable. I expect that world is upon us now – we'll see. All the information out there suggests strongly that we have eaten through our wad of real wealth, and it won't be coming back. If so, we will soon be transitioning away from being a society of "free choice".

I doubt if we can afford high-speed rail simply on the grounds of economics. I know we can't afford the thinking behind it. Resources spent on extravagant techno-fixes like this are, in my mind, resources diverted from efforts that may actually give us a shot at dignified survival in the future. Like, say, small-farm incentive programs?

I tend to agree with you. Personally, I don't care how fast the rail goes (it goes pretty fast anyway), but that it simply goes. That's why I'm a big fan of going back to trolley cars as a cheap alternative to extensive subway systems.

We have to learn to live without speed. However, people seem to be less receptive to ideas that they think will diminish their incredibly wasteful lifestyles. In that sense, I would put up with the moderate insanity of high-speed trains as an alternative to the constant, lethal insanity of highway #2.

We need more rail, yes, I absolutely believe this. But we also need to live more slowly, on a more human scale. I believe this: we must change our paradigm, and in order to do this, we must change our inner paradigm first. "Fast is best" is another version of "BIG is best" and we need to abandon these beliefs. Normal rail is plenty fast and requires no expensive additional infrastructure on the main lines at least (although it is an intense shame so many satellite lines are gone when we need them so much.)

Thirty years? My guess is we have maybe three years tops before the plunging anvil that is the U.S. takes us to the bottom of the drink, as it must. We don't have the resources for anymore expensive "the future is here!" 'solutions'.

By the way, am I the only one who envisions the destructive potential of something the size of a train travelling at 200 or 300 km/h? In my world, as a guy who considers working horses one of our better options, this is just another example of our unmitigated insanity.

A payback period of 30 years does not make a project “very economical” – no commercial project would go forward on that basis, especially given that project lifetimes (i.e. how long it will last without major renos) are typically assumed to be 25 years.

That being said, I don’t think we should be viewing a public transit service in profit-driven terms. It should be considered a service to the people, and you’ve listed many of the non-monetary benefits here.

I for one completely support a high-speed transit line between, say, Calgary and Edmonton – if we’re talking truly high-speed (300 km/h), a trip would take about an hour. And if high-speed transit has 1/10 the emissions of typical car rides, this seems like a much more viable alternative to reducing GHGs than, say, $2 billion spent on carbon capture and storage.