A new concept has arrived for inter-regional transit. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, just proposed a concept called Hyperloop. This concept could supposedly cost California 10% of what the current high-speed rail plan would cost, and travel faster. Interestingly, it's something Elon personally put some time and resources into but has no further plans because he doesn't have time to develop it further, being the CEO of two companies and all. Therefore, he's looking for people to pick it up. Perhaps it's something we should give serious thought to for connecting the Piedmont region, Atlanta to Washington D.C., central Florida, the coast (and beaches), and Chicago.
I'm still not 100% convinced since land acquisition is usually one of the highest costs of building transit, though maybe the flexible design would bypass some limitations trains and monorails have, allow it to use existing R.O.W., etc. Either way, I believe it's worth consideration and evaluation by mature and experienced people.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahelliott/2013/08/12/today-elon-musk-will-divulge-his-plan-for-the-j...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2013/08/12/hyperloop-the-high-cost-and-long-journey-of-cali...
It works similarly to a concept discussed for bridging the Atlanta ocean in the past and other concepts where there would be a long vacuumed tube, built almost like a bank teller suction tube, would through separated stages probably using magnets accelerate a vehicle up to approximately the speed of sound as it enters the main tube. From that point, a cushion of air (think hovercrafts) would provide low friction so that the cost of the kind of long costly magnetic coil needed by mag-lev to suspend the vehicle in a low friction environment can be avoided.
