this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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China can make high speed rail. And it's not a small country
America was built by train too to be fair
China has high speed rail in its eastern most populated section, with a single line running to the entire western half of the country, and similarly sparse lines to the north. The dense population centers in the US are not all in one area, they are spread across the continent interspersed with large swaths of rural land. That being said the US is working on high speed rail, and we've had passenger trains that cross the entire country for nearly two centuries - see Amtrak, as well as bus services like Greyhound.
As much as I hate to break up a circle jerk, the US is about as good at this as any other western country, and it's doing it across an entire sparsely populated continent, not small, highly dense European countries.
We've should have nationalized high speed rail the same way we have a nationalized interstate highway system. Not everything needs to be privatized for profit.
The US has a concept of eminent domain, which it has used in the past to build fairly fast affordable rail (and highways). There's no reason it can't work today except the fact our politicians are owned by car lobbiests.
When they put up highways, they very *very" often bulldozed through poor black neighborhoods. They didn't care.
I don't suggest we start doing that again, but the US had and has the capability to build out a fantastic trail system, but the highway system is lobbied for hard by car manufacturers.
AMTRAK gets like an eighth of the federal funding that roads get.
How profitable are highways?