Megan McArdle of the Asymmetrical Information blog identifies the major limitation of what’s supposed to be Rhode Island’s high-speed rail link to the rest of the Eastern seaboard…

Why is America’s high-speed rail so dreadful? The Acela delivers you, at enormous added expense, to Boston one hour ahead of the regional. On the DC-to-NY run, the added benefit is 10-15 minutes. The answer is that the Acela uses existing track, which is twisty, the better to serve every congressional district between here and Boston. Real high speed rail needs to be fairly straight, for the same reason you don’t take hairpin turns at 120 mph in your car.

Alas, any transportation project that would require moving train tracks is a non-starter is this part of the country, doomed by the difficulty of finding an acceptable straight-line route through the densely populated region. I like the way this commenter at Ms. McArdle’s site put it…

Since the railpath must be wide and straight, the only way to build it would be a totalitarian use of eminent domain that would be tolerated only by third-world dictators and first-world liberal elites. This would involve literally steamrolling over everyone in the way for hundreds of miles, destroying families, communities, and businesses in the fashion of William T. Sherman.

And even if a reasonable straight-line path were available, the nimby obstructionism prevalent in northeastern politics would almost certainly prevent anything new from being built.