I believe...

The US economy is based on spending as much possible as a consumer. Rather than focusing on infrastructure to improve livelihood, the aim is have endless construction and maintenance for as many people as possible. Everybody needs a car, or else you cannot safely travel(in the normal-ass suburbs where I grew up it was an hour walk to the grocery store, few pedestrian crossings for highways, and there plenty of sidewalks that simply ended due to gated communities or neighboring towns or villages that simply didn't to build some twords there edges). Each car will need to be taxed, registered, sold, bought, insured, fixed, fueled, towed, fined, accessorised, and finally scrapped and sold again in peices. If there was good public transportation, then less money would be changing hands, and the economy would look less impressive..

I don't think that was original reason, but I'm certain it's on the minds of modern economists now

a viable high speed rail system is more than just the trains.

its the rails.. and most the rail in america is owned by private freight companies. freight companies who don't like sharing their rail with passenger trains, and probably wholly unsuitable for high speed trains to begin with.

So you'd have to build your own stations, and lay your own rail, which.. if you want the trains to go anywhere useful, is probably going to involve enough land buyouts and eminent domain as to take up 95% of the budget of any rail plan.

But realism aside, it'd be fuckin wonderful if we could have a national high speed rail network that you could jump on to go almost anywhere.

Wow, thats a 12 hour drive!

😢

Just tell them it is for AI.

Getting the property and easements is probably the hardest part, especially when the will is presumably there for the urban hubs. Chicago, Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh, etc. on to New York on a shinkansen would be awesome but, especially in the city, they're never getting all the land to even start. It would also presumably need to be elevated like the shinkansen here in japan

While we spent 20 years, and 7 trillion bucks, losing wars in the Middle East, China built a nationwide high speed rail system from scratch, and eliminated most poverty in their country.

We just got out of one 20 year quagmire, and now Trump gets us right into another one. Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, etc. all LOVE it though.

We have the money to do anything we want in this country - free health care, college/trades, pre-k, etc., but the people we elect on both sides prefer to waste it on Wars, and policies that help the ultra-wealthy, which is Wars.