re: Can high speed rail work in the United States?

The problem with high speed rail in larger cities is that density makes eminent domain too expensive to get to city center. So lets say you can take a rail from Dallas to Houston but it only gets you to, say IAH. Then what? You have to add the cost of an Uber/Rental on top of the train ticket and you're still sitting in traffic on the freeway. It becomes much less enticing to a day traveler than just driving all the way from Dallas to your final destination inside Houston

Cities in Europe built underground mass transit, in many cases at the same time as automobiles came within reach of the masses, making high speed/underground connections a lot easier.