8 cars from the biggest used car system in the country is not a good sign. Either no one ever sells them or they simply aren't sellable.

Or they're snapped up the instant they're put on the market at a reasonable price. Which, in fact, is exactly what happens when a used Prius is put up for sale based on a quick check on eBay.

Back in 2005 a used Prius was going for more than a new model, simply because the waiting list for new models was so long.

You keep arguing they're an "experiment". Well, this "experiment" is more reliable than most cars on the road, and offers features not found in other cars in its size (or fuel economy) class. It costs more than similar small sedans which lack those features, but if those features (increased cargo carrying capacity, quiet interior, exceptional fuel economy, access to high occupancy vehicle lanes, reduced taxes, reduced emissions) are important to you then clearly it represents not just a good value but in fact your only option.

There are no room for high-speed sub-500 mile trains. The nations railroads are jammed with freight traffic and high-speed rail lines need their own dedicated right of way. If you think NIMBY is bad, try constructing a 4 lane-wide high-speed railway through dense urban areas/quiet suburban areas and having residents enduring violent swishes every ten minutes as a train goes by.

Beats having more jet airplanes screaming by overhead, spewing noxious pollutants into your air. Besides, the government has no problem seizing land - witness the recent Supreme Court decision regarding eminent domain. And the existing rail corridors are in many instances wide enough to permit the addition of a separate passenger line. You could also utilize the existing highway right of ways in many areas (for example the I-5 corridor in California).

Solar airplanes will likely be feasable in the future

Maybe on Mercury. There isn't nearly enough energy in sunlight to keep a passenger plane aloft, let alone cruising at 500+ MPH. Might work for a blimp, if people are willing to travel cross-country at 15MPH. Would probably be more practical to bike . . .

And that doesn't cover the complexity of trying to keep rail infrastructure in good shape in the weather extremes that we get in the US...

Weather is a technical issue, and really a minor one. The French ran a tunnel under the English Channel to connect high-speed rail to London. The technical issues they've confronted in Europe dwarf any weather-related issues in the US. Much of the most densely-populated sections of America is flat as a board, which makes deploying rail lines dead simple. With the dollar plunging and oil prices rising, air travel grows increasingly impractical with each passing day. Electrified rail is the only practical solution going forward.

I have a friend in California who can't drive and who travels intercity by that state's "superior" rail systems. She describes it as "a bus on wheels."

California's rail system is practically non-existent - it's absolutely nothing like European train systems. The Bulgarians would be embarrassed by such a network. There's a bit of intercity rail in the Bay Area (Caltrain), running from San Francisco down to San Jose, and the lines which run thru the suburbs of Los Angeles. That's about it. Amtrak runs a few slow trains from San Diego north thru the state, and a few people commute that way (say, from Orange County to Burbank or something), but it's not really practical. The lines are owned by private companies, who only maintain them well enough to support slow freight traffic. The government owns the commuter trains. It's a completely bass-ackward setup, and results in a train trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco taking more than 12 hours to complete.

What the government ought to do is nationalize the rail network and privatize the trains themselves.

The railways system of America is very hold and heavily funded by congress just to keep it at it's level today.

And the airlines aren't? They don't pay for the airports or the air traffic control system, you know. They also don't pay to keep troops stationed all over the middle east to protect the oil they depend upon. Chuck those costs into the equation and with that kind of money you could lay down high speed rail from coast to coast.

Runways and specifically airports are small compared to the amount of building and costs required to build out more rail systems.

And where are you going to find the land to build an airport in the middle of our most congested areas, like Los Angeles? Oh, that's right - you AREN'T going to find any single parsel of land that large. The best you could hope to do is build an airport way out on the fringe, and then spend BILLIONS in taxpayer money on top of that connecting it with massive freeways. So now instead of sitting at LAX waiting an hour and a half for your plane to take off, you'll get to drive 2 hours in heavy traffic to an airport out in bum***k Egypt. The only people benefiting from this scheme are Islamic terrorists, as we'll now be stuck spending even more money on imported oil.

we don't like government owned transportation companies (Amtrak), or taxpayer subsidized transportation systems

We don't? Gee, that's funny - I could swear I once drove around on a massive, government-built, government-maintained interstate road system. It must have been a dream . . .