Could High-Speed Trains Shorten US Travel Times While Reducing Emissions? (cnn.com)
- Reference: 0180179859
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/11/22/201221/could-high-speed-trains-shorten-us-travel-times-while-reducing-emissions
- Source link: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2025/11/travel/us-high-speed-rail-reimagined-vis/
> The journey from New York City to Chicago could take just over six hours by high-speed train at an average speed of 160 mph, cutting travel time by more than 13 hours compared with the current Amtrak route... The journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles could be completed in under three hours by high-speed train... The journey from Atlanta to Orlando could be completed in under three hours by high-speed train that reaches 160 mph, cutting travel time by over half compared with driving...
>
> While high-speed rail remains a fantasy in the United States, it is already hugely successful across the globe. Passengers take [2]3 billion trips annually on more than 40,000 miles of modern high-speed railway across the globe, according to the International Union of Railways. China is home to the world's largest high-speed rail network. The 809-mile train journey from Beijing to Shanghai takes just four and a half hours... In Europe, France's Train a Grand Vitesse (TGV) is recognized as a [3]pioneer of high-speed rail technology . Spain soon followed France's success and now hosts Europe's most extensive high-speed rail network...
>
> [T]rain travel contributes relatively less pollution of every type, said Jacob Mason of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, from burning less gasoline to making less noise than cars and taking up less space than freeways. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is staggering: Per kilometer traveled, the average car or a short-haul flight each emit more than 30 times the CO2 equivalent than Eurostar high-speed trains, according to data from the UK government.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2025/11/travel/us-high-speed-rail-reimagined-vis/
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/08/travel/high-speed-rail-america-acela-trains-california-texas
[3] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-fastest-trains-cmd
It could (Score:2)
But the rail road crossings would have to be addressed. Either raise, lower, or prevent vehicles from getting on them before a train comes by. Maybe even a detection system for the train. So if it takes 5 minutes to slow it down to detect a blocked crossing, then the crossing is blocked off for 10 minutes beforehand.
In the countryside, crossings are very open and easily messed with, so a detection and stopping system would be needed.
Re: (Score:2)
Have grade-separated tracks that go above or below the roads.
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I think it would have to be the roads that changes elevation as trains don't like grades and allso passanger trains tend to be a constant hight in contrast to to road traffic that sometimes are very tall and drivers seam to ignore warmings about hight restrictions
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Since there are trains that go over the rocky mountains, I think that argument fails. (But it might succeed if you argue practicality rather than possibility.)
FWIW, The SFBay Area BART system has high speed trains that move from elevated to underground. It's not a steep grade, of course, but it's done. (IIRC "high speed" for the BART system is around 70 mph, and is only obtained on the long straight sections. Of course, my knowledge is multiple decades old.)
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> Since there are trains that go over the rocky mountains, I think that argument fails. (But it might succeed if you argue practicality rather than possibility.)
Are they high speed rail trains, or scenic trains? They dig tunnels or route around mountains rather than going over mountains for any real rail traffic.
Scenic rail trains travel at 40 mph, high speed rail travels at 160 mph.
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A single grade separation costs tens of millions at a minimum, and can easily go into the [1]hundreds of millions [blogspot.com]. Optimistically assume you need ten grade separations per mile at an average cost of $50 million. That's half a billion dollars per mile just for grade separations .
[1] https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-exploding-cost-of-grade-separations.html
Re: It could (Score:3)
That's the same situation for interstates. There's no "at grade" road crossing on any interstate highway, by design. Every junction is grade separated, universally, by design. Yet we have a nationwide interstate system. Why is this seen as a barrier, when it's literally how we build anyway?
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The interstate highway system was built a long time ago when population density was a lot lower. Highways mostly went through countryside between cities. With time cities grew up around them, but the highways remained barriers with only infrequent places to cross from one side to the other.
Building a new highway through the middle of a city would be just as fantastically expensive as building a new high speed rail line through the middle of a city. Boston's [1]Big Dig [wikipedia.org] was a famous instance of trying to do t
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig
Re: It could (Score:2)
So you use those same highway ROW for the trains. They have to slow down miles before they get to the city anyway. In cases where there's no urban freeways, which is really rare in the US, you can build a terminal on the city edge instead, exactly like they did with shin-osaka in Japan.
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Sometimes using the highway ROW works, other times it doesn't. This partially depends on the design of the highways, and partially depends one whether they have the same destination. A train station under a section of elevated roadway can work well...but if you don't have that convenient elevated roadway things can get more difficult.
I can't even estimate costs, but they can get pretty high. (And sometimes it's easy.)
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HSR travels at 160 MPH, and needs to be separated from vehicle/pedestrian traffic for any number of safety reasons... you can't just run a HSR line down the median of a divided highway or on the shoulder. In the median you have to figure out the mid-span support of every overpass, and on the shoulder you have to re-arrange on/off ramps. Oh, and you really can't just run a 160 mph train through a residential neighborhood, and you can't, ever, have cars cross the HSR tracks.
The CA HSR project demonstrates eve
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> Boston's Big Dig [wikipedia.org] was a famous instance of trying to do that. It took 15 years to build and cost $14.6 billion for just a few miles of road.
Or, better comparison THE CURRENT HSR line being built between SF and LA?
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A HSR network is really problematic without a really good local transit network. (One you can reasonably carry your baggage on.)
Re: It could :: addendum (Score:2)
N.B.: I good system of automated taxis could do the job...but note "good system". Most places I've ever lived the taxis were both too expensive and to difficult to use to do the job.
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> Have grade-separated tracks that go above or below the roads.
Easier said than done.
Grade for typical trains is something like 2% or less, so raising a railway high enough to get over a roadway needs almost a quarter mile of track on either side minimum, so for a single rail bridge you just created at a half mile of impassible wall and cut a whole neighborhood in half. Automotive roads are better but still limited in a similar way. maybe triple the grade/a third the distance but you're still making a hu
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> Have grade-separated tracks that go above or below the roads.
Retractable concrete walls at crossings. Or, if that's too much, retractable bollards.
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You can't have people drive cars across railroad tracks when the trains travel at 160 mph! You just can't, as a practical matter, and as you slow down the train, you lose the reason for the HSR line...
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Where I live, a railroad crossing limits the top speed of the rail to 80 mph - definitely not high speed rail.
High speed rail is always grade separated. (How many non-grade separated roads you know which allow for a high speed above 80 mph anyway?)
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> So if it takes 5 minutes to slow it down to detect a blocked crossing, then the crossing is blocked off for 10 minutes beforehand.
Tell you what, next time you're driving somewhere with a passenger, just randomly pull over to the fade of the road for 10 minutes and if they as what you're doing, tell them you're waiting for a train to pass by... it will never fly.
For myriad reasons, you can't run a 160 mile per hour train alongside a public road, that just insane and unsafe.
Yes (Score:2)
Yes. It's a stupid question.
But making it actually happen is where the challenge is.
Could High-Speed Trains Shorten US Travel Times Wh (Score:3, Informative)
The answer is no. Almost all of the rail lines in the United States are owned by the freight companies and getting right of way corridors for dedicated passenger rail through the country would be almost impossible, require the use of eminent domain, and destroy many pieces of family homes. Even Amtrak cannot make its own connecting trains (YouTube worst Amtrak route from Florida to Alaska?) because it has to wait for freight trains as they get precedence on their own rails over passenger traffic.
Also, examine what happened with high-speed rail in California. The red tape is extreme.
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"...getting right of way corridors for dedicated passenger rail through the country would be almost impossible, require the use of eminent domain, and destroy many pieces of family homes."
LOL how stupid do you think we are?
Re: Could High-Speed Trains Shorten US Travel Time (Score:1)
What are you imagining? Please explain for example where your NYC to Chicago high speed rail will be as it comes into the geater Chicago area in NW Indiana and southern Chicago suburbs?
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One also needs to remember the US is a big country. The continental US is just a tiny bit smaller than the entire continent of Europe. The UK is only a few hundred miles tall - California is about 66% bigger. Travelling between the UK, France and Germany is only travelling between a few states.
A high speed train from New York to Chicago would be an undertaking of a huge scale it would put it in the top 10 total operational lengths of high speed rail. (That is, that one line would be longer than most countri
It's about regionals (Score:2)
You bring up HSR and some folks imagine trains cross country but really HSR should be focused on interstates. Florida is a good example, we have the Brightline between South Florida and Orlando and soon to expand to Tampa. Add in Jacksonville and you're pretty set for the state. If you want to go further after that link Jacksonville to Atlanta.
Take Texas for example, the fact anyone flies between Dallas/Houston/San Antonio/Austin is a transport system failure. It takes more time, more hassle, more emiss
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> "but really HSR should be focused on interstates. "
Exactly. That is about all we can expect would be workable/affordable. Otherwise it requires extremely expensive elevated tracks. The problem with many Interstates is that some of them now are nearly "full", having expanded multiple times for more lanes. There isn't an usable center area and sides are pinned in.
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To be clear I was not talking about the literal interstate highways.
Re: It's about regionals (Score:2)
"HSR should be focused on interstates."
You cannot have high-speed rail following Interstate highways, because then the trains would be limited to Interstate speeds. Interstate highways do not have the curve radii that high-speed trains require.
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Jesus christ, twice now. Interstate means "inside state" not the literal interstate highway system.
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No that would be intastate. Unless international means travel within a country. The intersrate higway system was originally designed to move move traffic long distance ( ie across state lines)
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Sure, yes that also. It definitely does not automatically mean "just run rails along the along the interstate"
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> Jesus christ, twice now. Interstate means "inside state"
Jesus Christ, twice now No, it doesn't - "interstate" means between states, intrastate means inside one state.
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> interstates
No, you mean intrastate, interstate means between states, intrastate means within one state.
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Acela isn't HSR, and it stops way too often to be considered HSR.
Please explain the route your imaginary SD to LA to SJ to SF train would take, because the actual LA to SF train takes a crazy path to get from one end to the other, easily 2x the actual distance between SF and LA - the direct route is impossible.
It depends! (Score:2)
In a planned economy yes. If free market is preferred, then no state will legislate maximum number of flights, or ban flights under x miles like in France.
Without this kind of intervention, it's likely that self driving cars would be chosen for overnight travel, with the use of real estate for parking being the limiting factor.
If the legislators decide that accepting sub-optimal travel is preferred over problems from emissions, then I can imagine certain routes being shut down, and airlines having to adapt
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If free market is preferred, then no state will legislate maximum number of flights, or ban flights under x miles like in France.
It's not a free market if you can force costs onto other people. French trains are very very very low carbon.
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France's trains are electric, and 2/3rds of French electricity is from nuclear power - is that the model the US should adopt?
Of course it could - but it won't (Score:4, Insightful)
In China, Japan, many other European countries, along with others, rail is often faster door to door than air on trips under 1000 miles, as well as being far more pleasant that even 1st class air. I always take HSR when its a plausible option when I'm traveling. Last time I took a train in the US (outside of the NE corridor) it was purely for novelty, and I came back by air eve though it was only 200 miles.
The problem is that the US has become unable to build large projects, some of this due to laws intended to protect the environment but now delaying or preventing the development of high speed rail, wind, solar and nuclear power. China has built tens of thousands of km of high speed rail in the time it took California to talk about it, but not finish even the first segment of the "train to nowhere".
Unfortunately we are trapped between conservatives who don't believe in climate change and liberals who insist the only way to fix climate is to do less. There are good technical solutions out there, and most Americans would be happy with them, but the extremists on both sides prevent it.
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The problem is that the US has become unable to build large projects, some of this due to laws intended to protect the environment but now delaying or preventing the development of high speed rail, wind, solar and nuclear power.
We have those too. I earlier today read these three articles:
[1]https://martinrobbins.substack... [substack.com]
[2]https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/... [samdumitriu.com]
[3]https://nickmaini.substack.com... [substack.com]
They are somewhat apolitical, largely blame free looks at how we have ended up here, and why. UK obviously, not US, but may
[1] https://martinrobbins.substack.com/p/how-hs2-built-a-bridge-to-nowhere
[2] https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/how-to-solve-the-100m-bat-tunnel
[3] https://nickmaini.substack.com/p/hammersmith-bridge
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Sam D is very good, and I think his analysis is broadly correct, but I would be wary of treating him as apolitical. He's a leading thinker for the centre-right, along with Sam Bowman (Sam Freedman completes the clever-Sam-centrist trifecta, but is on the left rather than right).
Hard and expensive (Score:2)
California tried it and it hasn't gone well. It turns out that building high speed rail lines is really hard and expensive. Not building the line itself, but everything else around it.
First you need to acquire the land. It's not too hard when building lines through the middle of nowhere, but in a place that's already densely populated, that can be fantastically expensive. It likely means demolishing a lot of existing houses and businesses to make room for the train. Grade crossings don't play well with
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"It turns out that building high speed rail lines is really hard and expensive."
This is true in a one-party state where politicians and bureaucrats are totally corrupt. The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF), a French state-owned railroad operator, came to California in hopes of helping the state build a high-speed rail system from Los Angeles to San Francisco but left for North Africa in 2011 because that region was 'less politically dysfunctional' than the Golden State.
Nor
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Not building the line itself, but everything else around it.
Yes, but it isn't thaaat hard: you need all of those things for interstates and equivalently fast roads too.
I've lived near a train line, and it really kind of sucks.
I kind of wonder how it sucked so badly. I used to live so close to a train station that if I opened a window I could hear just the announcements about how late my train was. Fuck you worst crapital connect. You won't be missed. It was a residential road that backed on to (but didn't a
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> London recently got crossrail. It cost about 14 billion.
According to [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], the total length of that project was only 26 miles. The final cost was £18.8 billion, or about $24.6 billion USD.
The distance from San Francisco to Los Angeles is about 350 miles. Assume about half that distance is densely populated and has a similar cost per mile as the London project. That leads to a total estimated cost of about $165 billion, not counting the other half of the distance that should be much less expensive.
In fact the most recen
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail
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Yeah we're taking about the tunneling under the city bit. You're not going to tunnel all the way from SF to LA.
There is no way half that distance is as dense as central London. One of the feats that paid for was threading the line between an escalator and a rail tunnel with tolerances in the centimetres. They also built massive, high capacity interchanges with existing high capacity stations, something which isn't really much of a problem in California. You can leave that to later.
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> I used to live so close to a train station that if I opened a window I could hear just the announcements about how late my train was.
Living near a train station where trains pass slowly as they approach/leave the station is very, very different from living next to a busy freight line where mile-long trains ramble by every hour or so, including in the middle of the night.
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It may be hard for California, but not for anywhere else. High speed rail is all over the world. Even the tiny nation of Java has high speed rail.
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Tiny nation. Less track. Less cost.
Even if you got the land for FREE, the construction cost of building a high speed rail from California to Washington DC would be absolutely enormous.
If you add in what it would cost for the land, the cost becomes a lot more than enormous.
Japan's high speed trains (Score:4, Informative)
I was stationed in Japan in the late 80s while serving in the Marine Corps. High speed rail was already a reality in Japan back then and it was awesome. The first time I was stopped at a railroad crossing while a high speed train went by was incredible. I was sure our high speed rail system was just around the corner. Here we are, 36 years later, and nothing. The US needs a trans-continental high speed rail system now. We need to overcome the obstacles that are keeping this from happening.
Re: Japan's high speed trains (Score:2)
We need it? Why? We have flights that do the job better - they dont require massive amounts of land seizure
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Flights don't do the job better than trains though.
You don't need to show up 1-2 hours before boarding for trains.
You don't need to go through an annoying and, quite frankly, completely useless security procedure.
Planes are fuel inefficient and we aren't getting eco-friendly passenger planes anytime soon, whereas high speed passenger trains can already run purely on electricity from renewable sources.
Trains also require, overall, less land area than planes do, as well as highways for cars. Which means we co
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Last train I took was in January this year, from Albuquerque to Pittsburgh. It was several times the price of the flight for the same trip. I mean, a lot. With significant discounts for disability and my credit card, it was still $1300 for two people. The flights were less than half of that.
I didn't happen to care about the cost. I also didn't care that it took so much longer than a flight. But most people will care about both.
I will say though, it was a lot more pleasant than flying, and the food was fant
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So you imagine trans-continental high-speed rail train travel will be just like boarding a SEPTA or MARTA commuter train? It won't.
There will be TSA, there will be baggage checks, and like airports, HSR train stations will be outside the major cities, no in downtown.
HSR travels at a fraction of the speed of a jumbo jet liner, I can cross the country - NY to SF in under 8 hours, how can a train beat that? I can fly NYC to Chicago in less than two hours, and by HSR, how long would it take? Be sure to factor i
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> We have flights that do the job better
Define better. For all but travelling to opposite extremes of the country, high speed rail is usually faster for passengers and drops you right in the central business district. You can move far more people through high speed rail, far cleaner, with more comfort.
The entire world had flights long before high speed rail came into the picture, yet there's a reason why many major economies have invested in the latter (and why that investment has paid huge dividends).
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We fly, instead.
Yes, but and most importantly (Score:2)
They are so impractical to build given the geographically distributed nature of the American population. It would require trillions of dollars just to acquire the land needed to build practical routes of track.
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The only way would be if there were a true breakthrough in tunneling costs (which from what I can tell the Boring Company did not achieve.)
I dunno, I guess we can argue which possibility is more microscopically feasible than the others - a political surge of collectivism enabling eminent domain on a national scale, or devoting housing-boom scale resources to acquire and redevelop land on the surface, or a magical tunneling machine.
Pretty sure the answer is and will remain "put wings on each railroad car
Why the rush? (Score:3)
Why does everyone need to be in such a hurry all the time?
Make a road trip. Stop and visit some charming places along the way. Take the backroads. Stay off the interstate.
Bonus: take a motorcycle and enjoy the smells you encounter along the way, in addition to the fresh air.
Re: Why the rush? (Score:2)
And use a bicycle.
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Fuck that.
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If you just want to get there, then private jet is the way to go.
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> Why does everyone need to be in such a hurry all the time?
Maybe we're not all plodding along life wallowing in our own misery staring out the window and have business / pleasure that involves the *destination* rather than trip.
Road trips are great for taking road trips, they fucking suck for getting somewhere.
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Oops, replied to wrong post.
If you just want to get there, then private jet is the way to go.
Safety! (Score:2)
Not as long as stab-happy animals released 79 times by idiot judges are allowed on trains, while good sanitarians are prosecuted for stopping them. But you are not ready for that conversation yet.
US Constitution (Score:1)
Funny thing the US Constitution, intrastate commerce is the SOLE responcibility of a state. i.e. A rail line from San Fran to LA is exactly that. Now, if it was LA to Phoenix, then it's Interstate commerce and FEDERAL territory. Whomever wrote this should do a better job of knowing the law.
Legacy Railroads (Score:2)
The barrier to high speed rail in the United States is legacy railroads. And legacy airlines. And legacy highways. The standard problem of a declining empire. They may be better, but not enough better to win the battle with those already existing methods of travel.
No (Score:2)
because they will never be built,
Yes, but no (Score:2)
Could? Yes. Absolutely. Will? Not a chance. There is just not enough political will to try to solve the issues preventing it, not to mention funding it.
High Speed Rail in China seems Phenomenal (Score:3)
As I understand it, China may have as much high speed rail as the rest of the world combined. Practically all of it built within the last 15 years.
No fatalities.
Only part of the puzzle (Score:2)
Yes, there are corridors and city pairs in the U.S. where high-speed rail could get people from one city to another quickly and efficiently. But what do they do when they get there? How do they get around?
...laura
Missing the big picture (Score:2)
Never mind long distance HSR construction. Use short rail stretches to the peaks of the high mountain rainges in the US, the continental divide being the perfect example, Accelerate on rails up those to a peak velocity that allows the connected vehicles to extend wings and disconnect from each other at the peak becoming individually airborne at the peak then glide to the destination, as much as possible using the glide angle to keep the speed high. It would have minimal environmental impact, only requiring
No. (Score:3, Informative)
Because there is no way car companies and airlines would ever allow it.
California tried and Elon Musk came in with a bucket of money and discredited transportation ideas and shut it all down. In fairness he also had help from airline CEO.
Like most things transportation problems are social problems in disguise.
freight rail gets in the way in the usa! (Score:1)
freight rail gets in the way in the usa!
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You would an entirely separate high-speed track and not have freight running on it.
Re: freight rail gets in the way in the usa! (Score:1)
where would the land for that come from? Going around great lakes and through mountains are occupied routes. Are you going to push homes out of the way, bore through mountains? You can but it's expensive!
Re: freight rail gets in the way in the usa! (Score:4, Interesting)
> where would the land for that come from? Going around great lakes and through mountains are occupied routes. Are you going to push homes out of the way, bore through mountains? You can but it's expensive!
Generally a few things
1) eminent domain for countryside land
2) tunnels into cities.
3) once the network is in existence cities that don't have it lose out and will make a big effort to find land for
The distances in America are much bigger, so ideally you'd move to a faster rail standard, either simply double European width or maglev. Of Underground tunnels, though, are a really big thing because the main benefit of trains is that you can run them right to the center of the city so that people living there can leave their offices 20 minutes before the train, walk or take a taxi, get to the station 10 minutes before departure and still safely get their train.
At the other end it's even faster because you don't need the 10 minutes of leeway.
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PLEASE explain why all the great techniques you describe didn't work in California?
> The journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles could be completed in under three hours by high-speed train...
No, no it can't. They started building a high speed rail line between SF and LA, and it is not a 3 hour ride (sorry, it WON'T be a 3 hour ride), it has to wind thru the valley of California to secure funding and rights-or-way.
Oh, and let's not talk about cost - ye gods the SF-LA high speed rail line is over budget!
Re: freight rail gets in the way in the usa! (Score:3)
1) We already have public ROW all over the country for interstates and utility corridors. Not all of it is suitable for true HSR, but then again you don't need true HSR on every mile. Mere "HSR(tm)" is perfectly serviceable. Even most true HSR systems only hit peak speeds in short stretches. This is the approach you would use in built up areas.
2) the vast majority of the mountain West is actually public land anyway. You would build it exactly how we did it in the 1800s when we built the transcontinental RR.
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The averaged numbers I found once in a EU report was 10 million euro per kilometer (special tracks, bridges, tunnels) -- I can't remember if that number included compulsory purchase of farmland. Those trains can't take a turn.
As example the Lyon-Turin ( [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ), a 270 km project in construction between France and Italy, includes 57 km (35 mi) tunnel below the Mont Blanc. The project cost an average of 100 million euros per kilometer, essentially due to the tunnel.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turin%E2%80%93Lyon_high-speed_railway
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I don't support high speed rail because it doesn't work well here (check out Brightline in Florida), but these types of problems have been solved elsewhere, including in Democratic countries in Europe.
Re: No. (Score:3)
No, that's not what happened. As usual, you're ignoring history and injecting your own false narrative into it. You like state owned businesses, so listen to what a French state-owned company had to say about it:
[1]https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
California's politicians are what happened to it. We have a bunch of people who think like you running this state, and it shows.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/french-california-high-speed-rail-north-africa-biden-trump-2022-10
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"We have a bunch of people who think like you running this state, and it shows."
And it shows what?
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That you and rsilvergun are obviously related.
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And don't forget NIMBYs. They would cause more problems than the corporations. Here on the East Coast, there's no space left for any new rail lines from Boston south (or even Portsmouth, NH) to below Washington. Everyone in or near the path would be suing to stop it.
Re:No. [Trains can't win?] (Score:2)
> Because there is no way car companies and airlines would ever allow it.
> California tried and Elon Musk came in with a bucket of money and discredited transportation ideas and shut it all down. In fairness he also had help from airline CEO.
> Like most things transportation problems are social problems in disguise.
Quoted against the censor trolls, though I actually regard it as a rather weak FP. More of a fundamental economic problem that America is not dense enough for trains to be profitable.
Maybe I need a disclaimer of some sort? I stopped driving when I was less than half of my current age. Quite happy with walking and local trains. Rather rare that I ride in a bus, car, long-distance train, ship, or airplane (in order of decreasing frequency) and I don't like any of 'em.
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> Because there is no way car companies and airlines would ever allow it.
> California tried and Elon Musk came in with a bucket of money and discredited transportation ideas and shut it all down. In fairness he also had help from airline CEO.
> Like most things transportation problems are social problems in disguise.
And let's not forget that American on the local level is ruled by, among other wealthy cohorts, car dealership owners. In this country where public highway funding has enabled the fortunes of entire generations of local gentry, you'll have to find another group of up-and-coming business people who see an opportunity for themselves in breaking the power of the transportation monopoly.
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The Koch brothers sank all of the projects, maybe when the last one is dead too?
Re: (Score:2)
There are also real problems with sparsely available origin and destination points. And the cost of building the lines through developed areas.
If you build a good system, it will be more efficient for the areas that it serves. But rail transit has fixed routes. This makes it inflexible. And you really need to multi-track the rails, because breakdowns will occasionally happen.
FWIW, I feel that streetcars are much more plausible/effective/significant per unit cost than are high speed rails. High speed ra