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80 percent of Americans live in urban areas.

Yes, but the census defines an urban area as containing over 50,000 people. There are going to be an awful lot of urban areas that are not at all conveniently close to a high speed rail station.

Source: http://www.census.gov/geo/reference/ua/urban-rural-2010.html

That's correct. It'll only be convenient for 40 or 50 million people.

25 million Americans live in the 10 biggest cities.

33 million Americans live in the 20 biggest cities.

44 million Americans live in the 50 biggest cities.

I think any of those is a reasonable number to build a rail system for.

If you count by census statistical area, the 10 biggest MSAs contain ~80 million people. There's 180 million people in the top 50 metropolitan areas, well over half the USA, all living in conurbs of at least a million people.

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