We have intentionally glossed over the growing rift between rail fans on the right way to do High Speed Rail in the U.S., but something has changed and we now commend the matter to your attention. There are two camps:

Team 110 mph: Wants to get some fairly high speed rail out to as much of the country as possible, using existing infrastructure and improving it. Service would be about like the AMTRAK North East Corridor, or train service from the good ol' days. This is a somewhat cost-effective way to get a decent alternative out to people.

Team 200+ mph: Wants to put all the money into one or two Japanese/European-style high speed rail corridors, and run them at speeds that will beat commercial airlines on door to door travel times. Trains this fast require dedicated rights of way with grade seperation, not unlike the interstates. They are expensive with a capital "EEEE".

Now click through the jump to find the new twist on this, coming from right here in the midwest...

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood playfully emerges from a Spanish HSR train.

The poster-child for Team 200+ has been California's LA-SF line. And the poster-child for Team 110 has been the Midwest, with many 110 mph lines radiating out from Chicago.

But now, the Midwest High Speed Rail Association has released a (activist-funded) study showing a way to get 220mph trains on the Chicago-St.Louis corridor, and make the trip in 1h52m. That's so fast that its actually faster than flying, when you count the time it takes to get to the 'burban airports, go through security, etcetera.

The Chicago Tribune has a nice comparison of the Chicago - St Louis corridor options, with time tables and quotes and stuff. Check it out.

The Transport Politic makes the point best:

Indeed, the Chicago-St. Louis line would be a legitimate candidate for a much greater investment on the scale of California’s 220 mph high-speed program. Compare the basics of the route with that of the Paris-Lyon TGV line, one of the most successful in the world:

Chicago-St. Louis vs. Paris-Lyon
Line	Metro 1 Pop	Metro 2 Pop	City 1 Pop	City 2 Pop	Distance
Chicago-St. Louis	9.6 m	2.8 m	2.8 m	0.4 m	300 mi
Paris-Lyon	11.2 m	1.6 m	2.2 m	0.5 m	290 mi

Meanwhile, at the Infrastructurist, noted conservative transit advocate William Lind puts his money on Team 110mph, or maybe even Team 90mph:

I am skeptical about any immediate future for high speed rail in this country. If you look at the European countries and Japan that have high speed rail, it’s icing on a cake. And the cake is the preexisting network of passenger rail services. What high speed rail here amounts to is icing without a cake. You would put enormous amounts of money into a few lines that would serve geographically only a small portion of the country. Our priority is a lot more trains running at speeds that are competitive with the automobile, which is somewhere between 79-90 miles an hour, which are two gradations on the FRA speed limit scale.

To talk about running at a couple hundred miles an hour, you’re talking about an enormous amount of money to build a dedicated line, and you leave the rest of the country with this Amtrak network that is so skeletal that, as in Cleveland, it’s essentially unusable.

I have yet to make up my mind which philosophy should win. It kind of depends on whether you see us having affordable air travel in the next 10  years - personally I don't believe that the airlines will be around to compete with any rail, based on the whole peak oil situation. But there seem to be plenty of rail fans who think the price of oil will stay constant forever. Since most people don't understand or accept peak oil, you're seeing the beginnings of a rout in the blogosphere, which is heavily tipping towards team 200+.