Things I want...

[orthoclad]

9. We have an adrenalinized, high-speed instant grat life

We HAVE to get to the opposite coast in hours, not days. We MUST NOT take an extra day or two off of rabbiting for the ruling class. Just so we can cram into tighter and tighter sardine cans watched over by armed Sky Marshals. A few mid-air blowouts and dropouts of these cheapo low-bid aluminum cans are a small price to pay - just "peanuts", actually. Power up that Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine!

Train derailments are much more survivable.

Aircraft contrails have a measurable impact on weather via cloud formation. Just look at how many fair-weather cloud formations, no matter how dispersed, are horizon-spanning linear forms. Research conducted on the planeless skies of 9/11 proved this.

Plus I really hate airports. Huge vastly polluting structures built far from population centers which require millions of extra car-miles, unlike the typical train stations in the center of populations. The many toxic chemicals needed to keep planes safely in the sky (fire retardants, deicers, etc) pollute the ground and water. People constrained by money and habit to live near airports are stressed by noise. Airports are now the prototypes for the tightly-controlled "papers, please" society; they normalize fascism. They are tentacled monsters.

Railroad right-of-ways also provided wildlife habitats and linear greenbelts for mobile species. Some of my fav frog, lizard, and turtle catching grounds were in track ditches and surrounding grounds in my childhood.

Some high-speed rail should be built to accommodate the jet-set (remember that 60s moniker?), but I would be delighted to see the human-centric, human-scaled comfortable trains of my youth return.