If you add up the trips that people take between all of those cities then sure, eventually you can make that number as large as you like. But that problem is not solvable by mass transit--you need O(k^2) direct links to get everybody efficiently between any pair of k cities. Meanwhile, here in California, we've got a graph with two nodes, one edge, 8 million people on one end, and about 32 million on the other. Which problem seems more straightforward to you?

That's not the argument you made. You said "nobody lives in the Midwest". Clearly that's not true. Meanwhile, a single midwestern city pair is the 6th busiest air route in the US.

This is my final comment in this thread. Yes, I was obviously being facetious, although having burned by the internet's ability to pick up on that in the past, I should have known better. Perhaps a better way to put it would be that in terms of population density (which is what really matters when we're talking about mass transit) the middle of the country loses out to either coast by a considerable margin. (Sorry.) I can't think of a simpler way to put it than the map on p. 24 of this PDF (http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/reports/c2010sr-01.pdf). You're looking for clusters of dark-blue squares arranged on a line. I see two (three if you count Milwaukee-Chicago but at 100mi. people will just drive.) One of them has a well-developed rail, bus, and highway infrastructure, and the other does not. End of argument.

The distance between Chicago and STL or Chicago and Indy is lower than the distance between SF and LA, which is about the same as the distance between Chicago and MSP. Lines of blue? The route between Chicago and MSP would be fed by MKE and Madison. I literally have no idea what this map has to say about rail or how it supports your argument.

Even though you have declared the preceding comment your last on the thread, I will do you the courtesy of replying if you choose to reply to this comment.