seen it before..
If the opposition is anything like that Acela saw in Massachusetts and Connecticut it has less to do with land takings and more to do with people living close to the tracks not wanting trains zipping by at 150 mph 20 yards from their houses.
Because most of these rails are to be placed within existing rail rights of way the biggest land grab the feds tried for during the Acela project was a junkyard. It sat in a key spot they wanted to use to straighten out a sharp curve in the tracks. It was amazing the impassioned pleas to preserve history spoken for a junkyard, but the NIMBY crowd knew their best bet for slowing the trains down was to fight that curve straightening project.
They won. They still live next to a junkyard and the taxpayers are stuck with a billion dollar train that must slow to 30 mph to make the curve.
