Hatunen wrote:
On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:42:11 -0700 (PDT), PeterL
wrote:

On Aug 18, 10:03 am, Dave Smith wrote:

European trains and public transportation are supported by huge tax
subsidies. Also Europe as a whole are smaller geographically than
either the US or Canada. So the two cannot be compared.

That's a misconception. Taken as a whole Europe is not all that
much smaller than the USA. The road distance from Nordkapp to
Gibralter is on the order of 6000km or about 1440 miles, and the
air distance from Lisbon to Kiev is abbout 2100 miles. From
Lisbon to Moscow is about 2425 miles.

The area of Europe is about 3,930,000 sq mi while the area of the
Lower 48 states is about 3,119,884 sq mi. There's some mushiness
in these figures due to land area or water area, and all, but
clearly the Lower 48 and Europe are of comparable size.

You're comparing the continent, "Europe" with the nation "United
States". For a fair comparison either compare the US with the EU or
North America with Europe. Deadhorse, Alaska, USA, to Key West,
Florida, USA, is 5570 road miles or over 4000 air miles. That's not
the longest distance from one part of the North American portion of
the USA to another. Now want to compare any distance in Europe with
Dead Horse to Panama City, Panama?

Now, what part of Europe is actually served by your high speed fancy
trains and why is the rest not served by them if they are such an
ideal transportation solution?

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--John
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(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)