I would love to see some viable rail solutions for mass transit. If we do a back of the napkin calculation based on rail transport of over 400 miles per gallon per ton of freight. It would go like this. A ton of freight is equal to about 10 passengers and their luggage, more or less. This is s crude calculation, right? that works out to about 4000 miles per gallon per passenger (mpgpp). Now in the real world it would be a lot less, since freight trains are full, and passenger trains are not. But even at 1000 mpgpp it's a lot better than planes, the best of which get about 70 miles mpgpp. Or buses, a fully loaded greyhound is about 300 mpgpp.  Or a fully loaded Hummer limo at 300 mpgpp. The best you could do with 4 people in a Prius is about 200mpgpp.  If we could run high speed rail at near capacity, imagine getting around 3000 mpgpp. AND if that same train ran on electricity directly, the efficiency would be around double. Some of the energy wasted going up a hill could be regained going back down the other side, as the electric motors would be used to slow the train and put power back into the grid.

Imagine a fast train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.... cocktail in hand, strolling the train hanging out, getting your groove on and starting to relax, and all on less than cup of diesel., or even better, less than 30 cents worth of electricity.  I wouldn't feel so bad about traveling. To bad there is no train to Hawaii.