Another significant issue is that the USA wasn’t built for rail, and to do so now requires sign off by land owners, municipalities, and so on. The amount NIMBY-oriented policies in California, for example, is a serious impediment. Oddly, people cite rural areas as an issue, but rural areas aren’t typically an issue. It would be comparably inexpensive to run high speed rail over undeveloped land, while tearing up buildings, roads, water, sewer, and power would be tremendously costly. For much of Europe, rail transport was put in place long before automobiles became commonplace. For much of the USA, the cities didn’t even exist at that time, and they were mostly built around automobiles.
For places like NYC, Chicago, Boston, yeah. And we see rail in those locations. We do not see rail in towns and suburbs around those areas. In Atlanta, for example, MARTA exists, but NIMBY policies in Northern suburban counties keep it from expanding. This is especially bad considering more people live in those counties than in the city proper. Further, even if one could get sign-off, the cost to acquire the property required would be incredibly costly. Land prices are historically high, and after acquisition would need to be cleared and then rail would need to be laid. Unless the USA wants to get rid of compensation for imminent domain seizure, I don’t know how this kind of rail development would ever be done.
Considering how the wasteful cars / trucks / planes are on their way out in a short time frame (decades), while buses / rail / barges are much less so,
I expect that transition to happen naturally as economic pressures make the position favoring the minority able to still afford cars / trucks / planes as less and less politically tenable.
