We have high speed airplanes. Why not make airports and the TSA theater better instead? Airplanes don’t require maintaining thousands of miles of track — or buying up land to put it on. Capitol-centric countries like France do well with trains because Paris is the center of the country in terms of commerce and population, but the US has much lower population density. Who really wants to take a train from Chicago to Los Angeles other than tourists? If we cite China as a counter example, one ought not forget that most trains in China are slow and the population doesn’t have much money. Long distance trains are a 19th century affliction. We should be looking up and not down.
Who really wants to take a train from Chicago to Los Angeles other than tourists?
Pretty much no one. But Chicago to St. Louis? Or Chicago to Minneapolis? Or Charlotte to Atlanta? Or Dallas to Houston? Or LA to San Francisco? Etc/etc? Lots of people. That's here high-speed rail investment helps. High-speed planes are fine, until it snows in Chicago, or thunderstorms in Atlanta, or high winds in Denver and then the whole national air system gets screwed up. Alternatives are good.
There are certainly city pairs where it would make sense, if the rail lines were to be built for free by some genie.
But if you add up all the people who want to travel between Chicago and St Louis in a year, and then multiply by the hour-ish that they might be able to save by catching a high speed train instead of driving, and then divide by the tens of billions that such a railway line would cost to build and maintain, then... is it really a sensible use of funds per man-hour saved?
How many hours are spent stuck in traffic? How much loss is that to society.
Perhaps people would start moving closer along the rail lines, now that frees up land from sprawl. Etc. The same rail line could carry goods (fewer trucks on the road). The rail line could be electrified, now pollution will be down and so on.
Billions of dollars is not all that expensive. The US is a rich country. First time realized this when I saw a small town with 30K population easily built a new high school for 150 million USD - compared to that, the "billions" does not sound all that big if it reconfigures the economy at that extent.
Yes. Because each one going in one car, specially in a american's very popular gas wasting cars is not only super ineffective in terms of energy and costs per trip but also extremely bad for the environment.
Also, you make a good high speed railway, and the demand will appear. In my coutry also nobody used the train, untill they were modernized, suddenly the word started to spread that it was nice, and now too many people ride the trains and we need more.
Air travel contributes greatly to climate change. When we are talking about High-speed rail in the US, no one is really talking about cross country trips like Chicago to LA. They are talking about regional trips like LA to SF or DC to NYC. Ideas like maglev or even the hyperloop are what I consider to be "looking up"
