re: Why can’t America have bullet trains?

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Look at CA’s attempt at high speed rail.

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They never tried. They just laundered the money - just like Joe's $42B high speed internet that doesn't have a single rural customer connected.

Not saying it couldn't work in some areas, but there are very few places that have both the regular traffic and manageable distance to make hsr feasible. Acela is one of them, LA/SD/LV is another, and Texas Triangle is probably the only other one.

The only way I see a feasible system is by connecting smaller cities with large hub airports (ie. Birmingham/Hsv/Mongtomery/Chattanooga, etc. connecting directly to ATL). In that scenario, I could see airlines eventually alleviating enough costs to warrant it.

There's quite few drivers but you can consolidate many of the big ones under the simplified umbrella of "insufficient demand"

In the US, demand for bullet trains would be uniquely constrainted to a limited number of sweetspot distances, such as the op's DC - Boston, to a limited customer base leaning wealthy

Shorter trip time savings are inherently small and will not make economic sense for the overwhelming majority to take. Amtrak prices are already comically high, most simply aren't going to pay what would inevitably be a significant premium to arrive somewhere 30-60 minutes earlier. Now add a critically unique characteristic of the US - 91% of our households own a vehicle. That simply isn't even an option to the majority of bullet travelers globally. Your remaining short-distance demand is almost exclusively business travellers who don't give a shite about the price difference over distances like NY-PHI. How many people is that? Is that quantum really large enough to warrant billions of investment when they already have sufficient options?

Longer / cross-country trips? Slower traveling speed vs planes is obvious, but there would essentially be no such thing as a non-stop. You can't travel as the crow flies, the connections to get across the country would be a massive pain in the arse. You also have to slow down and stop at every connected station. Oh and airline tickets would be cheaper, that's pretty big. Super high demand Tokyo-Kyoto runs ~$100, almost NOLA to Birmingham. There's no realistic pricing model that would result in anything other than hemorrhaging money

DC to Boston. That's the only meaningful train corridor today and that is the only meaingful stretch that should be considered. Just don't tell the snivelling self-loathing cretins who yap about how uncivilized we are without European high-speed rail that they can't get that without inevitably wiping out Amtrak and screwing the poors

Wait, I thought California, via Nancy Pelosi’s family, was going to have a bullet train connecting NoCal to SoCal……

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Public transit sucks. I don’t want to have to ride around with you people.

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Eh it definitely has some terrible moments.....

But it also can be an affordable way to get around and beats sitting in traffic.

I wish the US had a better public transit.

They’ve been talking about a high speed rail project between Dallas and Houston for well over a decade. Estimated to cost over $30 billion and they’re going to have to use eminent domain against many of the landowners in the proposed path because they don’t want to sell. They’re trying it though…

LINK

Why don’t we have any?

If it was profitable someone would have already.

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The only way I see a feasible system is by connecting smaller cities with large hub airports (ie. Birmingham/Hsv/Mongtomery/Chattanooga, etc. connecting directly to ATL). In that scenario, I could see airlines eventually alleviating enough costs to warrant it.

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This is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Ignoring the reality that such funding would never exist in the first place, you do not need to spend tens of billions of dollars (with no prayer of recuperating) when sufficient means to get to regional hubs already exists for essentally everyone

1. You're poor without a car / price conscious - you can already take Grayhounds or shuttles (e.g., Groome) for ~$50, a price which high-speed tickets would dwarf (for reference, $75-100+ tickets for short routes is a thing in China) and no regional public subsidy could realistically put a dent in. You're also not someone important enough to need to be somewhere 1-2 hours earlier. No ridership to speak of - outright not affordable and no incremental utility from time saved if it was

2. You're sufficiently-to-well off with a car - you don't even have to interact with another soul, and you might not even use half a tank through your destination. For most the ticket cost would be nowhere near worth getting somewhere 1-2 hours earlier. Cars also entail opportunity costs associated with autonomy, you can pivot to any drive-thru or titty bar along the way. Low ridership - more demand from being more logistically affordable, but incremental utilty of time saved barely benefits and comes at expense of autonomy that many value

3. You're rich or on company travel - if you'd prefer to not use / rent a car, a high-speed ticket could be chump change (or you simply don't care because your company is covering). Unfortunately you're a smaller % of any population, and you're further biased to being less common by nature of the small metro connecton. And don't forget to reduce that rider pool by those who prefer whoring airline rewards for a 30 minute flight for which one leg of the trip entails airport perimeter to one of 4 gates in 5 minutes. Insignificant ridership - affordable aand some would find value in a liitle time saved, but the size of that pool is way, way too small to get out a shovel and start digging tracks

Massive upfront investment that no public or private entity has a prayer of accumulating + substantially more expensive than existing offerings with minimal added benefit + no hope of achieving scale with such a small population pool...there is no regional high speed model

You can't have stuff like that when you allow whacked out leftists run wild.