Actually the old state & federal highways could not transport goods just fine. As someone who lived back in the 1960s I can clearly remember the overloaded roads and crawling traffic on a multitude of highways that were obsolete and undersized. There badly needed to be massive investment in transportation infrastructure. As it was airports and interstate highways were chosen over rail. Maybe rail would have been better, I cant say, but the highways were overloaded & rapidly getting worse. If we were to stick with automobiles the freeways could not be built fast enough. Theres also the argument of a unified national design for those over a patchwork of state projects serving inevitably regional or local needs and underserving longer distant transport. Thats one of the reasons the Federal highways system was built. By the 1920s it was clear the state highway projects were not going to serve national traffic adequately. Some states barely had highway programs then. Jump ahead thirty years and many states still were badly underfunding their roads. Fiscally conservative old crocs dominating state and local governments were loathe to fund large scale construction projects.
Because it is godawful expensive (CA HSR is now estimated to go over $100 billion, within a few months or a year at most they will probably come up with an estimate of $125 billion or $150 billion) and there is a lot of better things to do with the money. Contrary to what you seem to think the US does not have infinite wealth. You have to make choices on what is worthwhile and what is not. This is not worthwhile.
It failed because no one particularly wanted it. States like WI turned down the money and turning it down wasn't even controversial. Unless the US government picked up 90%+ of the tab (including maintenance) HSR to Minneapolis made no sense for Wisconsin. The trains would have ran empty and Wisconsin would have had to pay a large amount of money to help maintain useless track.
You might want to look at who the Governor was who turned it down before you go judging the money. Republican Governors during the Obama Administration turned down federal money for all kinds of worthy things just to make political points.
Like I said it wasn't even controversial in Wisconsin. There was little outcry even from Democrats. No one wanted it. HSR in Wisconsin gives it NOTHING!!! Outside of maybe a route to Chicago it is completely and utterly useless. Wisconsin has all of one big city, Milwaukee. The line ending at Milwaukee might make sense for Wisconsin, west of there is nothing of note. Unless the US government picks up virtually the entire maintenance expense it is a dead loss for Wisconsin.
The answer here is, it depends. Back in 2012, Amtrak laid out a plan to upgrade the NEC that included replacing several bridges and tunnels, straightening the track and several other improvements that would allow them to reach 220 MPH and cut travel time between Philadelphia and Washington from 93 minutes to 54. Total cost? 151 billion USD for a total track length of 438 miles. Now, that was from almost ten years ago. It's probably gone up since then.
useless, if passenger train still being lower priority to a freight train hauling lumber and lube oil.
Upgrading the NEC makes the most sense of any spending of money on HSR in the USA, because it also has the public transportation to feed it
Personally, I have nothing against HSR, and even wish my area had one. I've just been pointing out how the feds usually decide on what to fund, aka the Representatives and Senators deciding if it's in the interest of their constituents. There's more Representatives and Senators outside the area served than inside so motion is DoA.
Washington is a landlocked state?
