>>1965973>It's already dense (and populated) enough to support HSRYou have no clue what even counts as "enough to support HSR."
(People per square mile)
Somerville, MA: 19,000
Cambridge, MA: 18,000
Chelsea, MA: 18,000
Boston, MA: 14,000
Everett, MA: 14,000
Malden, MA: 13,000
Brookline, MA: 9,000
Atlanta, GA: 3,700
Charlotte, NC: 2,800
The population of those MA cities totals more than 1 million, nearly a quarter of the Boston metro area, all living within a roughly 5 mile radius of downtown Boston, vs Atlanta's mere 8%. If you add in the seven small areas that are denser than Atlanta proper (Clarkston, Chamblee, Decatur, Brookhaven, Dunwoody, Stone Mountain, Lovejoy), you're up to 700,000 which is still just 10% of the Atlanta metro area. And this isn't even a fair comparison since Clarkston is actually 10 miles away from the center of Atlanta.
But here's the kicker, even adding in those denser areas to Atlanta proper, your density is still just 5,200/sqmi for the CORE. You have a long way to go before you come anywhere near the density of Boston, which is not even very dense compared to seriously dense places like NY City and Tokyo. To reach Boston's density you'd need to sustain an insane 10% growth for 15 years, concentrated in Atlanta proper.
> word salad.The tl;dr is that you have no idea what you're talking about. You base your arguments on feelings and pictures of construction. Even density itself is an indirect factor in HSR demand, if you don't even understand the basic scale involved it you definitely have no idea what you're talking about.
