I confess to a fascination with proposals to build high-speed rail lines—and to intense skepticism that such lines can provide economically useful transportation in most parts of America. Sharing my skepticism is urbanologist Wendell Cox, writing in the Wall Street Journal. Cox argues that only two high-speed rail lines in the world—the Tokyo-Osaka Bullet Train and the Paris-Lyon TGV—have proved profitable. And he takes particular aim at the high-speed rail project which Barack Obama ballyhooed, and provided $2.6 billion in financing for, on the day after his State of the Union Speech.

That line would run from somewhere in the Tampa Bay area to somewhere in metropolitan Orlando. That’s a 82-mile distance, far shorter than the 300 or so miles covered by the Bullet Train and the Paris-Lyon TGV. The corridor is already served by Interstate 4, and the two major metropolitan areas at either end have very low densities and no significant downtown concentration. Almost no residents of these two metro areas are likely to use the rail line; they can get to where they want to go more easily and quickly by car. The only market would be tourists.