re: Every developed country has high speed rail, why are so many against it in the U.S.?

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After reading through the thread, it looks like OP has been soaking up CCP talking points on Reddit.

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Correct. This kind of crap comes up every time a republicans take control in congress and there's a possibility of Amtrak using funding. You'd need regional commuter rail up and running and sustaining itself on the existing rail lines before we even think about hub to hub intra-city rail.

We don't really have that outside of the northeastern part of the US and Chicago.

And Louisiana? Forget about it. Louisiana would need a commuter rail like this first before we start fantasizing about real intra-city high speed rail that can truly compete with air travel. Something like this that could serve 2-3 million people:



And Louisiana has had nothing like that in 50 years. Houston has a better shot of setting that up than Louisiana.

Intra-city high speed rail is just not realistic or financially sustainable outside of parts of the northeast, Florida, California and MAYBE Texas. We have the "barely high speed" Acela routes - that is currently the best candidates for upgrading to true high speed rail.

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So if Amtrak was privatized and given subsidies and timelines with penalties people would still complain.

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Subsidies?

Like the ones for California’s high speed rail project?

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Well I’m a cargo pilot. Someone has to go pick up all the iPhones and Temu crap you buy.

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Touche.

The food does suck, but every major China city is a lot cleaner and safer than any major US city.
And no I’m not saying China is great or I want to live there.

Airline lobby pumped millions to Congress attempting to block it. Southwest spend millions in Texas alone. Not good.

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They are trying to build one in California, and it is going exactly as expected.

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Not a single person who supports high speed rail responds to comments about CA’s fricked up system.

America doesn’t build anything anymore.

Our bureaucratic and corrupt system is incapable of building a functional high speed rail system.

It simply cannot be done.

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I would like to think that the airline industry has been fighting against this sort of thing. There might be fear of not being able to legitimately compete against trains going more than 100 miles per hour.

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The airlines do it cheaper than trains could even dream of doing it. Read up on the high speed rail they have been spending on in California for the past 12 years. It’s going to be way more expensive than flying LA to Frisco. And that’s if it ever gets built.

There have been many studies that try to explain why the US can’t build high speed rail as efficiently as other countries do.

It has a lot to do with the unique personal freedom Americans equate to having their own car and not relying on public transportation.

Bizarre

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Like the ones for California’s high speed rail project?

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Shitty govt is shitty govt. You could point to their costs of trash collection, sewage, roads, taxes, police, healthcare and say well Cali does a terrible job of that, so it will never work here.

That said, an equal alternative is to improve the current flying infrastructure we have, with security theater and all.

There's little to no excuse as to why flying is so awful right now.

There is nothing I want more than high speed rail throughout the US. It is the best means of travel. Every major city in US should connected. It’s the bidet of travel. Everybody talks crap about until you try it then toilet paper just doesn’t cut it anymore.