At one time, the NHRR had a line called the "Putnam Division." The tracks went from Grand Central Station, right up through the spine of Westchester County, NY, and into Putnam County in the vicinity of Mahopac, NY, where the line swung to the east and met up with the New York Central's Harlem Line in Brewster, NY. The Putnam Division was slowly abandoned after World War II and the tracks were torn up in Westchester and Putnam Counties. Much of it now is a hiking/bike/perpetrator trail.
That is a serious waste, and, if I had my druthers, I'd rip up the hiking trail and rebuild the railroad. The right-of-way runs through some heavily populated areas that are bedroom communities for New York and White Plains. If the Putnam Division were operated as a commuter railroad line, it might be possible to get several thousand vehicles a day off the highways.
I don't mean to just pick on New York for this. You can find similar misbegotten rail-to-trails in many urban areas. Boston has one on part of an old Boston & Maine railbed that ran from North Station out through Lexington and Concord; fifty years ago, Budd cars provided commuter services on that line.
These railroad lines were a great resource; allowing them to wither and die has proven to be short-sighted. They should be rebuilt.
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At least because it has been preserved as a trail, it *can* be rebuilt. If it was paved over and put under houses, it would cost a horrible amount of money to rebuild.
In other news, the California High Speed Rail Authority has set the final route for the high speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It will take the shortest/fastest route. Current projections are that a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles will take approximately three hours -- or roughly the same amount of time that it takes to go to the airport, find parking, check in, and then do the inverse at the other end. Yeah, it's only a 1 hour flight from SFO to LAX, but it's the other two hours of BS that do ya in...
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