Quote:
Originally Posted by liat91
I was looking at a map of Amtrak’s system and noticed that this country seems to be split up into 7 large regions;
1. Atlanta - Boston Corridor (Extending as far west as Cleveland)
2. Miami - Tampa - Orlando - Jacksonville Cluster
4. Houston - San Antonio - Austin - Dallas - Oklahoma City Cluster
5. Chicago - Minneapolis - Kansas City - St Louis - Cincinnati - Detroit Spoke
6. San Francisco - LA - San Diego - Phoenix - Las Vegas - Sacramento Cluster
7. Seattle - Portland - Boise - Spokane Cluster
Salt Lake City, Denver, Nashville and New Orleans would be the big independents it seems, although there could be an argument for an eighth region covering a New Orleans - Memphis - Nashville Cluster
I looked at it from a geographic perspective primarily. I took culture in to account some, but not that much.
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There have already been various breakdowns of the MEGA regions as they are emerging beyond metro regions.
The Mega regions still have a TON and I mean truly endless acres of nothing or farmland between population centers before they become something like the Pearl River Delta or Greater shanghai.
The closest one we have to that is the Bos-Wash corridor in the northeast (although its still not completely connected) or maybe the conglomeration of LA-riverside and San-Diego/Tijuana but there is still a lot of space between the two due to mountains and some military reserves.
If you we are talking in terms of rail, the best plan is to expand local services among the major metros/csa's and once those regions are built up with local rail and transportation then you move on to connecting the MSA's together via High speed.
So you need, for example, complete local rail networks in Socal, Vegas and the Central AZ, then you'd connect all of those systems together with couple of high speed rail lines.
Now youd have a southwest cluster, a Northern California cluster, Cascadia, Front Range, Texas, Great lakes etc.
then eventually if the demand was there do even longer high speed trains between those clusters to link the whole country.
This process would take decades and require heavy demand for rail. I dont know if the last full national connection would ever come to pass as I dont see how that will ever be more convenient or cheaper than airfare the country is simply to vast
High speed connections across the west coast mega-regions, A connection between the Great Lake Cities and the BOS-WAsh corridor. Sure
But a high speed connection that goes from LA to NYC will just never be worth it.