Three other points -
a) San Francisco's Sunset District was a suburb of sorts at one time. The key to its development were the tunnels – Duboce for the northern part and Twin Peaks for the southern part. A sort of Main Street has grown up near (Irving, one block North of Judah) or around (Taraval) the tracks. A similar pattern exists in the Richmond District on Geary even though the tracks were ripped out long ago.
b) When the SFMuni began limited service in their part of the Market Street Subway by running N-Judah trains from the Duboce + Church portal a weird ridership pattern began (it ended with full service). Muni patrons were off-boarding at Market + Church, walking one block to Duboce, and boarding an N-Judah train (two car consists usually). The Financial District was about twenty minutes away on the surface but about five minutes away underground. My point ? SPEED MATTERS !
c) The BART system functions as a component of the Muni network while inside the San Francisco city limits. A Muni adult monthly pass is valid for those rides (though some transit planners are ignoring the network effects and have proposed dropping that integration). This is not just a commuter serving service – it's an all through the day service. This means that a forty-five minute (or more) run from Geneva + Mission to downtown can be done in under half-an-hour. Again, SPEED MATTERS !

P.S. Part of my definition of "Main Street" keys on the location of the library branches ( SFPL ):
1) Sunset at 18th + Irving;
2) Parkside at Taraval + 22nd;
3) Richmond at mid-block 9th/Geary/10th/Clement; and
4) Anza on 37th Ave.(near Geary).

Great article, and will be looking forward to the future installments.

Also, great comments. After reading them, however, I’m struck by how many of them are taking assumptions as conclusions.

Problem with intercity rail in USA is that there’s not much data out there that’s current or even applicable. Best models are in Europe, and those, of course, are subject to challenge based on cultural/behavioral differences, etc.

But if we are going to give the idea of interurban rail any meaningful thought, we really do need to look forward another 40-50 years, and build in assumptions that are not all negative and based on outdated studies.

It’s my impression that feasibility studies for light rail were done when gas was cheap and its future supply considered virtually unlimited; CO2 emissions were not taken seriously; commuting time within a metropolitan area was a lot less (making the comparatively long interurban commutes an unattractive alternative); and a daily two-way commute to one’s job was a given. Also, productivity while enroute by train was not as great as it would be today, when one can use a cell phone and laptop to be fully productive while in transit.

As commuting times increase to the point where they equal high-speed rail travel times between some city pairs, gas prices continue to go up, commuting trips per week go down (due to home officing, office hoteling, etc.), 90 productive minutes on a train vs 90 non-productive minutes in a car starts to look like a more viable alternative.

It’s also premature to predict what fares would be, and whether they’d make regular interurban commuting prohibitive. Looking at fares in isolation isn’t particularly helpful. One needs to look at how, in a given household budget, lower housing and other costs in City A could justify the annual train fares to City B. The differential could be well in excess of $1,000 after-tax dollars per month. Anyway, who could even guess what fares would be, until we understand costs of construction, operation, etc. — and ridership.

Then, factor in some types of public fare subsidies. When one looks at the public subsidies built in to maintaining the road system, airports, intra-city transit, etc., the subsidies could be pretty substantial. Then add incentives that [hopefully not wishful thinking] might make sense as part of a policy to reduce gas-house emissions.

If one looks at ORD and other Midwest airports, a huge percentage of flights are for destinations within 500 miles — these are well within inter-urban rail distances. If some number of these flights were off-loaded onto a new fast rail system, the cost-savings for airports would be HUGE — less money to expand and maintain runways as air traffic grows (existing capacity could be used for longer-distance flights), less wear-and-tear on airport-related ground transport; less airport-related noise and pollution, etc. These trade-offs and others like them could, in an enlightened analysis, justify shifting public subsidies to light rail.

Finally, re: comment by Anonymous about the future of Chicago, it’s a truism that most of the great world cities are located on rivers or seacoasts; they all rose to prominence when those locations were critical. But I don’t think that the future of a London or a Paris is in doubt just because the Thames and the Seine are no longer critical transport routes for them. Chicago’ had an initial advantage because of water, and then rail, but like other world cities, it hasn’t depended on water (and, increasingly, hasn’t depended on rail) for decades, and has nevertheless prospered. Chicago’s prominence is pretty much here to stay. You don’t throw away a world city.

I’m all for someone figuring out how to use the Belleville airport and revitalize the St. Louis economy. But it shouldn’t, needn’t and probably couldn’t be at the expense of Chicago or any other city in the Midwest. If I’m following the Urbanophile’s overall message, it’s that we need to think less in terms of a zero-sum game and more in terms of regional cooperation.

I guess I’m skeptical about the ability to justify high speed rail purely in terms of auto/air diversion.

Interesting. I wonder if that would be the case if true high speed rail were in place along that corridor.

Speaking strictly for myself, I wouldn’t consent to drive any more than necessary anywhere in the vicinity of Chicago.

To say that the geographic location of Chicago is obsolete due to the decreased importance of waterborne transit is a slight exaggeration. Lakefront property is still considered an amenity (check out condo prices) and in addition to geographic amenities, there’s a whole lot of man-made amenities in Chicago which would be difficult to replicate in Belleville within an economically-feasible timescale.

http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/106587/America%27s-Emptiest-Cities

http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/12/cities-ten-top-lifestyle-real-estate_0212_cities_slide_8.html?thisSpeed=15000

Interesting article. Indy ties at #9 with supposed Sunbelt boomtown JAX. Others on the list, a hodge podge of cities mentioned in this blog usually suggesting how wonderful Indy is compared to Dayton, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit.

The picture used for Indy is not particularly flattering.