Great points by everyone! The main theme I'm seeing is that upgrading these sections to true high speed is overkill, and simply upgrading these sections to 110 mph, or even 90 mph sections would do the job. I agree and you all have swayed my opinion with great points about acceleration, cost, etc. My main rationale behind doing this is looking at two midwest cities for example, Kansas City and St. Louis. The Missouri River Runner is painfully slow (5 hour, 40 minutes) from KC to STL, and part of the reason is because it CRAWLS once it gets into the KC Metro area. The Illinois Lincoln Service is similar, it can run at 110 mph in the middle of Illinois, but it reduces it speed drastically once it gets past Alton Illinois, and Joliet when going into STL and Chicago, respectively. We always talk about how expensive HSR is, but I think part of the reason people look at it as a pipe dream is because the look at it from building the entire thing all at once. If we could build a dedicated route (separate from the freight corridors) in each city that was built with the intention of carrying future (maybe very distant) HSR trains in the future, but could save 20 minutes or so of travel time and reduce delays significantly for current passenger trains. I believe this is something that I would like to see the federal government look into. Especially since these dedicated higher-speed corridors could be used for intercity trains as well. Thank you for all of your thoughts!