In the new issue of The Washington Monthly, Phillip Longman makes a strong case that America doesn't need high-speed rail so much as higher-speed rail that arrives on time and at more frequent intervals. Here's the crux of his argument:

Increasing speeds on the slowest segments of the line would do as much or more to shorten travel times as making the fastest speeds faster, and wouldn’t require an expensive new right-of-way or new equipment.

Suburbs once seemed like a good idea to politicians and the people that moved there, but the downsides to suburban sprawl became clear in a few generations: long commutes and the pollution that goes with them, loss of farmland and forests, increasingly large houses with increasingly large carbon footprints. But will the refocus on transit-oriented, densely-populated cities post unforseen problems for the next generation? In Orion Magazine, James Howard Kunstler suggests that the mistake we're making is huddling in bigger, taller cities that won't be resilient when energy pressures make running them too expensive.