Hey, California is building high speed rail. And when you can finally take a bullet-train from Madera to Bakersfield (cost: $200M/mile) in 2048, that will really show the Europeans!
And I have to question why Europe (and apparently every other 1st world country) can build trains at affordable prices but we can't. What is different about the USA that makes trains and quality infrastructure so much more expensive. Sure, we're bigger coast to coast but that doesn't address why a medium size city can't build for a future of anything but cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbFGG4T3_Yo
I just did a quick bit of googling to check on a previous poster’s figures for California’s high speed rail. Not going to comment on those. The California project appears to cost more per mile than in some other places because of the high cost of real estate and because of the geological obstacles.
Cities aren’t building public transit because we don’t want it, not because they can’t. To suggest that someone might like to have the option to take a train somewhere, or to be able to walk or bike somewhere without the prospect of being flattened by an SUV would be to declare a WAR ON CARS.
Land prices in the Central Valley of CA (where most of the ~500 miles will be laid) is not particularly high--at least not enough so to explain a 4x difference in cost per mile to some recent European HSR projects. In some places where land prices are higher -- most notably the Bay Area -- the project will largely share right-of-way with the existing Caltrain network (which will lower speeds and create constraints to operating one or both networks on the same infrastructure, although I don't think these plans are finalized). The US cost-disease for these sorts of projects also exists for subway line construction (~2-4x more expensive than Europe), suggesting a common cause to high costs independent of transit mode. It should also be noted the CA HSR authority was established in 1996, which would mean from its inception, the project may take ~40 years to complete (13 miles per year). By comparison, China has been building 1700 miles/year for the last decade. This is a common theme in my comments here: if we think what is happening in the US is "good enough" then we are deluded. Even Gov Newsom cast some shade on the HSR project recently, but really, what I would guess needs to happen is a serious inquiry and some people getting fired or maybe even charged with corruption, depending on the findings.
The LA Times had an interesting article a while ago on the potential gap between the statutorily established maximum transit time of 2h 40m from LA to SF versus what will actually be possible given the various constraints that have impacted the project. The Caltrain-shared segment will be <100mph, and unless the entire route is engineered to 50 mile-radius turns, the 220mph maximum speed will not be feasible outside of the Central Valley (in particular, I believe some of the proposals to build tunnels to through the Transverse Ranges have been shelved, in favor of cheaper options which will limit speeds in the southern portion of the route). My expectation based on this is that, if ever completed, the realistic transit time from LA to SF will be more than 4 hours (the LA Times has a broken link to their analysis, sadly).
And it's not that I'm against HSR. If I could wave a magic wand and reconfigure US cities in a variety of ways to facilitate final-mile transit, HSR would make more sense in general. As it is, US cities are all laid out under the strict assumption that most transit occurs by car, with an appreciable proportion of the population sprawled out in the suburbs and exurbs where mass transit is not economical and is not deemed desirable. How different, really, is:
car ride > airport > bus/shuttle to car rental compared to:
car ride > passenger rail station > train > bus/shuttle to car rental?
However, if HSR has a chance in the US, it would be preferentially in areas where: population density is relatively high, land is flat, and there is high-volume of travel between points <500 miles apart (since shorter distances favor rail over air for transit times). I would expect the Texas projects have the highest chance of success for true-HSR (Acela corridor is very good, too, but too many constraints over land-use seem to limit improvements to the average speed). So if HSR works in the US, it should work in TX, while the CA stuff if typical CA nonsense (I assume as a native I can say this).
Fortunately, freight rail in the US is very good (maybe the best in the world depending on criteria) and, while being much less-sexy, is an important part of the efficient movement of goods.
