The answer, unfortunately, is yes. We say “unfortunately” since billions have already been pumped into turning the U.S. into a modern rail nation, and the collapse of HSR projects  would be an enormous loss to the nation, both in concrete dollars and in the opportunity cost of going another half-century with no national system of mass transit. Over at Progressive Fix, Mark Reutter writes:

Unless the White House acts forcefully and decisively to advance its transportation agenda in Congress, the president’s vision for high-speed rail may get sidetracked by the looming federal deficit.

That’s the growing perception on Capitol Hill as Congress grapples with an infrastructure program that could cost between $22 million and $132 million a mile if developed along the lines of 200-mile-per-hour bullet trains now running in Europe and Asia.

Unlike the health care debate, President Obama has been conspicuously unengaged from the details of how to move his high-speed-rail (HSR) plan from a one-off award program using Recovery Act stimulus funds to a dedicated multi-year program akin to the scope and ambition of the Interstate Highway System.

And it gets worse: Following the much-ballyhooed $8 billion that the government allotted to states as part of the stimulus bill, it doesn’t look like there’s much more federal money after that. In 2010, Congress authorized $2.5 billion for HSR projects — and for 2011, it’s a mere $1 billion. And given the shambles condition of most states’ budgets, it’s highly unlikely that state governments will be able to write big checks to HSR projects in the next 2 to 5 years.

In other words: If we want any hope of actually seeing an HSR line open, we’d better formulate a longer-term plan, and fast. Many advocates are on the case: One coalition of transportation advocacy groups is holding a press conference in D.C. this week, asking Congress to raise the 2011 HSR appropriation to $4 billion. But HSR needs more than just a couple billion here and a couple billion there — this is a massive national project, and the costs will be serious money. This fact has not been lost on Congress — last summer, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar introduced a draft bill that would add $50 billion to the surface transportation program to fund HSR over the next six years. There’s also that whole idea of a National Infrastructure Bank, which could potentially step in and get some private funds flowing towards HSR.

Still, unless HSR funding becomes a serious, urgent issue in Congress, we could very well find ourselves $8 billion poorer with nothing to show for it.