Why doesn’t US have high speed rail?

It's complicated.

Rail Travel is for gays and communists.

Because we’ve allowed corporations to rape our country since the fucking 80’s. The chickens have come home to roost — we have the country we deserve now.

Oil and gas industry is too powerful

Americans are spoiled and want to go exactly where they want to exactly when they want to, door to door. Trains, even fast ones, have fixed schedules . No one rides the intercity bus anymore either.

Because we're all supposed to drive big honkin' gas guzzling SUVs on sprawling interstate highways. "High speed rail?" That's some commie shit, OP, and we don't go for commie shit in the good ole USofA. I just called ICE on your ass because you need to be deported.

[quote]No one rides the intercity bus anymore either.

We do in NY.

You might as well as why we don't have universal healthcare or free college education or a national pension or any of the dozens of other amenities that every other developed nation offers to their citizens but the US won't because "that'll never work here" and, my personal favorite, "how would we pay for that?" The answer is the same: unchecked capitalism, extreme greed from the oligarchy that rules over us all, and the myth of American Exceptionalism.

Jesus doesn't want us to.

Exactly r8. All of the things you mentioned could work in the US but we're a nation of selfish, money-grubbing assholes.

Republicans.

That's the answer to any question you have why America can't have nice things.

Wait, what? The US doesn’t have a national pension?

^^nope.

I truly think the US isn't going to have anything progressive like universal health care etc. until the Boomers are gone. It's going to be a while.

You’re not thinking very clearly, R14.

R12, social security is paid into by the worker. It's not a pension it's a savings program.

R12 …and by the employer…

Because of the lobbying power of the auto and oil industries.

NIMBYism.

People don't want to pay for something that will benefit other people, even if they will also benefit from it directly or indirectly. It's just pea-brained spite.

You saw that sentiment on DL when then federal government was forgiving some student load debt.

*loan not load

It's an enormous country with a decentralized population that doesn't travel far enough, frequently enough, to justify the investment.

Trump just killed our dream.

[quote] student load

Yum.

The only place in the US that makes economic sense for high speed rail is the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington, DC. No other route has as many people or population centers. And while it’s not fast enough, it’s a lot better than it was: travel times are shorter.

Because of the volume of traffic on the route, Amtrak owns the tracks and infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor and with few exceptions, uses them for passenger service. In the rest of the US, Amtrak uses tracks owned by the railroads whose business is freight, and a large factor causing Amtrak’s delays across the rest of the system is due to the priority railroads give the freight service over passenger operations.

R23 $4 billion cut out of a current budget of over $130 billion. It was supposed to cost only $33 billion, and should've opened five years ago. But it's years behind schedule and at least four times as expensive as planned.

Fuck that shit. Put the $4 billion literally anywhere else, and it'll do a world of good.

I'd love it if they would build high-speed rail between Vancouver BC and Portland. It's not as dense as the Boston-DC area but plenty of people live there.

I don't think anyone is suggesting building HSR between Reno and Wichita, r22. It would make sense for a handful of regions.

OP thinks that money grows on trees. Do you know how big the US is? The majority of European countries are smaller than Texas.

R27 - there's already a train line between Portland and Vancouver. It takes about an hour longer than driving - notwithstanding any delays due to freight traffic.

R25 is absolutely correct. You need large cities that are relatively close together and several in a row. Once you're west of Philadelphia, it's large expanses between cities without enough traffic between and 2 cities to justify the expense.

Do you have any idea how many large cities are strung along together in Japan?

Canada and Australia don't have it either. The US - like Canada and Oz - are countries that really developed post rail-network installation. European and Japanese cities have been there and rail networks already put down to connect the cities a long time ago.

Rail has always been more for freight because of the huge expanses in our country.

Eisenhower thought it was a good idea to build a bunch of fucking highways instead, and America loves a sunk cost fallacy.

The only serious talk about it in Canada is the Quebec City to Toronto corridor.

R27 The distance from Portland, OR to Vancouver, BC is a bit more than 300 miles or about the same distance as Boston to Wilmington, DE. Between Portland and Vancouver you have one major population center, Seattle, and a total population of about 17.5 million people in the three states, although many of them in Eastern Oregon and Washington and in BC are so far from the train’s route that they’d seldom if ever use it.

There are more than 50 million people within 50 miles of the Northeast Corridor. From Wilmington north, you have major population centers in Philadelphia, Newark, NYC, Stamford/Bridgeport, New Haven, Providence and Boston and an average population density of over 1000 people per square mile vs 92 in the rest of the US. Starting to make sense?

The Northeast Corridor is technically Boston to DC, correct?

Even at high speeds you’d be on a train for hours at an extreme cost when you can fly, albeit miserably, more quickly at a lower cost. Plus new airlines are now flying non stop between cities that had previously always required layovers. I get the romance of train travel but I want to get where I’m going more quickly. That being said, I’d jump on a train in the northeast in a heartbeat, but only if it didn’t make 37 stops in a 100 mile trip.

Admittedly, I've only ridden on Amtrak a handful of times, same with the El in Chicago, and more times on the subways in NYC. And of course, I took trains (and buses) the entire time I was stationed in W. Germany.

But I did study Public Administration in my Ph.D. program (Public Policy for my undergrad and Govt, for my M.A.), and if we want to do something badly enough in this country, we can do it. And I can rattle off examples of expensive things we've done with our tax monies (for good as well as evil) until the cows come home, my favorite being the Interstate Highway System, which seemed like an impossible task at the time. But we did it. This country, once the people back something. can do almost anything.

I'm soooo sick and fucking tired of people using the size of this country as an excuse for things we [italic]can't possibly do.[/italic] My idea is to build high-speed rail tracks beside all the interstate highways. The routes are already there, most of the highways have some space beside them that could be used to lay track (instead of building extra traffic lanes), and there are already major "exits" that could be used as rail stops.

Poo-poo me all you like, but I think it's a great idea.

Now: let's make a list of powerful oil men/dynasties who would never let that happen, and let's start with the Bush family. Yada yada yada.

Like it or not, we are too big a nation to connect with high speed rail. Of course it can be done but it would be enormously costly compared to Europe or Japan where the distances are minimal. Consider the ongoing plans to connect LA and Las Vegas by high speed train. In order to get to the Southern California station you'll need to travel to Rancho Cucamonga which is, on a good day, 90-120 minutes away from Central LA. Tickets will go for about 240 dollars r/t. If you can get to Vegas by car in 4 hours or by plane in 45 minutes at a cost of 60 bucks each way, why would you use the train? I think the same would apply to most other places in the country. Also, for the record, Amtrak reported only around 33M passengers for the entire country on a recent year. Making a nation-wide high speed network profitable would require a change in a culture that has unequivocally favored the car as a form of transportation for over a century. I think governments see the stakes as too high and they may be right considering our current 30 trillion plus national debt.

Hey R36? Maybe I just like riding on trains.

For a country that doesn't care a fuck about mass transit, high-speed rail connections seems a very distant dream at best, and even then for a few select clusters and corridors where it might make some degree of financial justification.

A less ambitious dream might be to ensure a reasonable degree of connection among major cities (outside the Northeast Corridor). Why should there be do few trains between NYC and Chicago, and the fastest connection be 19h 32m? Why should a trip from Nashville to Chicago involve 5 hours by bus and 5 hours by train, nevermind coordinating connection times with two departures daily from each mode? (Or a bus/train ride between Nashville and NYC at 29 hours, not allowing for modal connection times - there being only 3 trains in a week that make the route?) And have you seen some of those train and bus stations in major cities? They're appalling.

The U.S. is so appalling in its disinterest in train transportation (beyond a just adequate if rather expensive NE Corridor service). From the 1950s shift of emphasize to the interstate highway system, US train service has been a disaster barring that one corridor exception, and it's unlikely to change unless a population and economic boom could guarantee ridership and secondary benefits of new residential and mixed use development along industrial/commercial corridors.

Honest answer? We're too addicted to cars, and labor unions intentionally blow up the bill far higher than any comparable parts of Europe or Asia. (It cost 8x more per mile to build the L.A. Metro versus any given HIGH-SPEED RAIL line elsewhere.) Also, the cheapskates in Congress won't even pay for upgrading the track along our ONE ACTUAL semi-high-speed line: the Acela is only about 20 minutes quicker between NYC & D.C. than standard Amtrak, at a far higher fare.

That said, there's now apparently one in Florida, which I know little about since I know I'll never go there. (Even AFTER Dump's gone.)

Because it would be for the masses and the GOP and the 1%ers have less than zero interest in helping to foot the bill for anything that helps the masses.

[Quote] It's complicated.

It’s actually not that complicated.

The GOP is protecting its oil and gas industry donors. It’s not just high speed rail; it’s even city mass transit. They’ve blocked every attempt to add mass transit to Nashville, for example

They would have to put an armed Security Officer in every car. This ain't Amsterdam.

High speed railway would make sense from DC to Boston and from San Francisco to San Diego. It would be great to also have it from Chicago to NYC

Which system had the Hoodline, R43?

Today, Amtrak’s long- distance transcontinental services are basically subsidized sightseeing opportunities for seniors. No one else is willing (or has the time) to spend the equivalent of first-class airfare to get from one coast to the other in a sleeper. The plane takes six hours, seven with bad headwinds. The train takes three days.

Amtrak has continued serving these routes, with pretty minimal online traffic between intermediate points, because it operates in something like 46 states, all of which have reps who vote to keep it funded.

They also pulled funding for a proposed Texas. Traffic between the major cities in Texas is hellish, so high speed rail would be very useful.

It's Robert Moses's fault. Not kidding.

For the same reasons we have a limited amount of rail, period.

We did have a more robust rail system a hundred years ago, but trains in this country since the Reagan era have been seen as things for the poor, where you have to sit with *gasp* other humans.

Most of the post war housing boom focused on the suburbs and billions/trillions were spent developing local highways and interstate highways in the 50s and 60s, all to deliver people to and from their suburban kingdoms. Investment in rail, new or old, plummeted.

Eisenhower premised the building of the interstate highway system based on the autobahns he’d seen in Germany, then the most advanced way to deliver men and arms to points of embarkation to fight in potential wars in Europe and Asia. By the time it was half-done long-distance military transport was almost all done by air, as in Vietnam, but of course like Topsy it just growed. And kept growing. Roadbuilding is profitable.

Roadbuilding is profitable in the front end, until the maintenance of the roads kicks in.

Bitch please get your priorities in order.

R41 It's not just the GOP. The Dems do it too.

Einsehower had plans that made sense for 1955, not for 2025. Since his time, air traffic has become much more affordable and available. Why would you spend 5 days going from NY to LA when you can do it in 6 hours for a 10th the price?

There was a high-speed route planned between Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland. The government was ready to give the state money to help build it. Governor John Kasich refused to accept the money, so it went to another state.

I've heard of a planned high speed route between St. Louis and Kansas City, with the University of Missouri in the middle. They talk of a 30 minute trip between StL and KC, compared to a four hour drive time. It would be great for commerce in the state, since so many business folk travel between the two cities every week.

R54 That Missouri train would have to travel 500mph to cover that distance in thirty minutes. That’s jet airplane speed. Most HSR doesn’t crack 200mph.

Fossil fuel underwrites our lifestyle here in TACO Don's America don't you know

I suppose this is not a good moment to suggest recommencing passenger ship travel between L.A. and San Francisco.

Trump thinks that the government's money is is his own personal stash.

I want a flying car like George Jetson’s.

PUBLIC transportation? You mean like with the general public? Can you imagine?

R8 the myth is if we just tax the rich it’ll pay for everything. Nope. The rest of us would pay much higher taxes to get all of the dem-socialist programs

[quote]Eisenhower thought it was a good idea to build a bunch of fucking highways instead, and America loves a sunk cost fallacy.

Huh?

[quote]rest of us would pay much higher taxes to get all of the dem-socialist programs

Bye Bernie.

Most of you never live WeHo. What the hell to you need with a rail, and I’m not referring to the running a train kind?

Most of you never live WeHo. What the hell do you need with a rail, and I’m not referring to the running a train kind?

[quote] sunk cost fallacy

[quote] Huh?

[quote] the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial.

[quote] Most of you never live WeHo.

It's alive! WeHo is alive!

Hey there!

90% of travel is for business, the remaining 10% is for pleasure. We now have the capability to conduct business via the internet, but big businesses are whining about the expensive brick and mortar buildings they rent or own in major population centers, so we're back to commuting, using tons of gas to be stuck in traffic jams. In the absence of commuting into work, we'd still need interstates for truckers to deliver all the stuff we seem to feel we need. Trains are very efficient for getting heavy freight from one city to another, not so efficient for getting them to the stores or to the customers who ordered them.

In regard to traveling for pleasure, people who are still working want to maximize their destination time, so flying is the only logical choice. For people who are retired and not watching calendar days tick down, there is value in moving at a leisurely pace through the countryside, whether by train or by car.

Maybe instead of spending trillions to carpet our vast country with HSR that's still only half as fast as a jet, we invest even a fraction of that money in next-generation aircraft and turbine technology.

Develop and scale sustainable aviation fuels, electric aircraft, and hydrogen fuels, so air travel is much less carbon-intensive.

Develop quieter engines, so air travel isn't so loud.

Develop hypersonic aircraft, so air travel is faster.

And with some of the leftover cash, we could spruce up airport security systems and local transit networks, so the experience on the ground is faster and simpler.

When I was young, I recall Americans dreaming about what the future would be like. What technological advances would we have?

And now that I’m older, I find America in a rut. No more dreaming, few advances. We’re stuck in the 20th century

On the other hand Asia (China, Japan, Singapore), makes cities for the 21sr century.

One of the great things about high speed rail is that it takes you from downtown to downtown.

Airports are usually far from city centers.

Of course, Europe has effective transit systems in each city so, when you get there by train, it’s easy to get to your destination by subway or bus. Too few American cities have that.

OP, it's largely the result of being less densely packed than Europe and Asia. It's why you're unlikely to see high speed rail in Canada or Australia on a national scale. You might get some high speed rail in pockets of countries like the US, Canada, Australia, and South America, though.

[quote]I suppose this is not a good moment to suggest recommencing passenger ship travel between L.A. and San Francisco.

There will never be regular cruise ships traveling between US cities because of the Jones Act. And the distance is much too far for any other type of ship.

[quote]On the other hand Asia (China, Japan, Singapore), makes cities for the 21sr century.

Well, if the US had what is essentially slave labor, we would have cities like that too.

Too big and the infrastructure was taken over by freight and highways

r74 Yes; but the Jones Act (freight) and the related PVSA (passengers) restrict [italic]foreign[/italic]-flagged ships. US-flagged ships are allowed to transport passengers domestically, as happens with cruises from California to Hawaii, and used to happen daily, sometimes twice daily, with cruises on the SS Catalina from San Pedro or Wilmington to Avalon. Certainly it's unlikely to happen for economic reasons; but it's a bit of a pity for passengers not to have the option to travel up and down and the coast in a leisurely way on ships.

R74 there are no US-flagged vessels in service between the US mainland and Hawaii, nor have there been since the Pacific Far East Lines, successors to the Matson Line, went under in the late 1970’s. NCL has one US-flagged vessel, the Pride of America, sailing from Honolulu among the Hawaiian Islands. Were it to carry passengers to or from the US West Coast, it is the only passenger ship in service that would not first have to stop at a non-American port to embark or disembark passengers. But it doesn’t.

In 1998 the swells at Ensenada were so great that the QE2 embarked passengers in San Diego on the r-t-w cruise rather than bus them to Mexico to board as planned. The captain told me Cunard happily paid the $100,000 fine rather than risk the lawsuits attendant to injuring a passenger or losing luggage over the side as we would have had to be tendered out to the ship in order to board. The Ensenada cruise port is much improved today but it was dicey back then.

The costs to build a ship in a US shipyard and operate it with an American crew to American safety standards is an order of magnitude beyond what foreign-flagged vessels cost. That’s why it isn’t happening.

Americans are top-dollar, they don't work on the cheap. You need foreigners for that.