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I think you sort of answered your own comment. The gas tax. Raise it, and use the extra to fund HSR. American's are adaptable, they'll gripe at first and then when they see and/or use the benefits, they'll learn to live with it.
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If we raised the gas tax and used some of the revenue to pay for a significant expansion of transit and high speed rail, it is likely that you'd see a significant --and sustained-- real estate boom with creating housing at all of the new stations. The higher gas tax would also encourage the purchase of more efficient vehicles, including plug-in electric vehicles (
http://cta.ornl.gov/trbenergy/trb_do...sion%20538.pdf ). These are estimated to be nearly 30% of market share by 2030. Additionally, there could be mandates with the new and expanded transit systems funded by the higher gas tax to use a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources such as wind or solar, thereby providing guaranteed markets for renewable energy, allowing them to achieve the scale to be competitive with coal or other sources of energy.
I could go on and on but we could significantly reduce (perhaps by half) our consumption of oil if we made a few choices and decided to price the externalities of consuming oil.