That’s called a commuter suburb, which is different (in that the people who live there don’t tend to work there) but yeah that can happen. If you live on the east coast there are a lot of walkable towns that did that when trolley companies bought out land to run tracks to.
I’m familiar with those, I live near a small “downtown” area that was a trolley suburb before the bad men took all the trolleys away.
With high speed rail it could be further from the existing cities, and allow it to be built somewhere that isn’t already suburbia (which now surrounds all US cities).
I think if high speed rail corridors were to happen in the current Amerikkka, real estate speculators would buy up as much land as they could near any planned stations. Something to prevent that should be part of any proposed HSR.
Yes, probably the best way to hendle that under capitalism would be for the transportation authority to own the land around stations so they can capture that land value back into the system but a lot of placed (Denver, off the top of my head) don’t allow their authorities to own land beyond their right of way
