Will A High Speed Rail Network Ever Be Built In The U.S.?

30 thoughts on “Will A High Speed Rail Network Ever Be Built In The U.S.?”

1. People should stop comparing this idea to Japan or Europe. Those have the same amount of land as mere states in the U.S so that's not a fair comparison. The real issue is the cost of building these tracks and trains across huge terrains as well as getting people on board with the idea since the U.S became so car centric from decades ago.

2. I think We need:
   1. West coast HSR from Vancouver BC Canada to San Diego CA.
   2. Midwest HSR from Chicago to Huston.
   3. East coast HSR from Montreal Qb Canada to Miami FL.

   And that’s just start, from then on, there is potential to expand from these locations to elsewhere, such as Seattle to Billing Montana and then to Denver Colorado before back to Chicago!!
   And from Chicago to Detroit to Columbus Ohio to Cincinnati and to NYC.

3. The government doesn't own the land that's why. Anyway, Biden is the worst president ever piles of preventable problems & he wants you to forget about those & distract you with this Infrastructure plan.

4. We're faaaaaar too highly regulated, self driving cars are just more feasible

5. What are you talking about?

   Driving DOES NOT make sense at all!

6. Most Americans living today haven’t experienced commuter rail infrastructure that works properly because it’s never funded enough to be designed well due to corrupt influences from big oil and the auto industry who also ruined the excellent streetcar grids and interurban routes we used to have that did work well. Driving is a stressful and inefficient waste of time on top of most people’s already stressful day. Automobiles also have so many costs attached to them. They’re not a sound first option.

7. Electric cars also destroy the environment including releasing greenhouse gases through resource mining, manufacturing processes pollutants and ultimately going to the landfill in mass droves. The pollution they cause is simply unnecessary as is the amount of urban space squandered on parking and other paved over autocentric wastes. They also perpetuate urban sprawl, the food deserts that come from that invariably, along with cities that are not navigable as a pedestrian or bicyclist and are, in fact, inhospitable to humanity. They add to traffic congestion. Commodification of societal needs and normalization of trying to substitute rampant consumerism where we need standardized, regulated and uniform public utilities doesn’t work.

   Putting the financial burden of transportation inefficiently and directly on the individual citizen is simply not wise or fair and hasn’t been the norm for even 80 years. We need to invest in commuter rail that’s properly implemented as it typically is overseas. A commuter rail system is an engineering marvel while buses are just buses. The most reliable predictor of a neighborhood being impoverished is if it has no commuter rail connection. The American people are apathetic through decades of disenfranchisement and a lot of that marginalization (eg Robert Moses’s racist urban renewal) is through divestment of public infrastructure, utilities and programs to help the American people. We’re past the point of car dominated transportation being anything better than a tragic hindrance or an outright travesty. Public works materially improving life for the taxpaying citizenry will bolster civic pride.

   Numerous studies show that built environments of homogenously bleak and bland duplitecture dreck that profiteering developers push on us for their privatized gains to our public loss for the riches of themselves and corporate slumlords not only cause homelessness from being financially inaccessible to most Americans, but also cause depression from creating such a devastatingly sterile, cold, unloving urban habitat that’s too congested and overcrowded to work properly as a correctly engineered built environment. Our roadways are overcrowded and no amount of widening them and adding lanes will do anything to help it because it just leads to induced demand that inevitably grinds to a halt at snags and bottlenecks down the road. Shouldn’t American cities be thriving centers of culture and character rather than austere and chintzy morasses of mediocrity?

   I believe that we can design the cities of our nation to reflect a future that embraces humanity and that we also must for America to have any sort of a bright future ahead of it. Right now we are mired in the destruction of our cities from the inward attacking neocolonial oppressors who weaponize their clout of wealth against the nation for their own off-shore un-American gains of privileged, parasitic, private profits. This greed fueled anti-social exploitation is present day feudalism driving us into another gilded age. Tons of new petrochemical building “luxury living” housing units remain empty serving only as financial assets in investment portfolios of hedge fund and permanent capital firm cretins sheltering dubiously acquired wealth instead of as direly needed shelter for humans. We deserve a landscape we can be proud of and country should come first before corporate looting and exploitation. Legacies are important and live on forever.

   With space opened up in our cities we could rebuild beloved structures gone from economic and environmental disaster utilizing new technologies such as hempcrete and 3-D printing. We could create vertical farms etc. on spots currently now just serving as paved over squares and nothing more. We can extend democracy into offering the taxpayer residents democratic say in what their city consists of, how it looks and how it operates promoting civic engagement and participation.

8. True it takes so long for a project to be done the world may never know

9. All these dumb privatized rail projects. God forbid the federal govt makes an honest investment.

10. I WANT MORE TRAINS IN MY COUNTRY

11. Had to pay for the useless Republican wars in the Middle East instead.

12. ewre becoming a thrid world country

13. Acela is like a Ferrari during rush hour in NYC. Is it capable of going fast? You bet. Can it go at top speed for more than 1 min without crashing? Absolute no. The top speed of whatever MPH has no meaning.

14. High speed rail in the U.S. is just like the SciFi movie out of Hollywood. Never tired of dreaming, talking and making it. At the end, it remains fictitious.

15. I guess the only way is by forcing. Every other plan for high speed rail in the US has failed so I assume forcing the US to have high speed rail could work

16. Infrastructure is a dirty word in the US. Even the more traditional definition of infrastructure. We were once the envy of the world and have for years been sliding toward 3rd world status for many reasons. Culture war politics at the highest levels that accomplish nothing. Labeling everything that is for the good of society as a whole "socialism". Ignorance and narrow minded thought. Off shoring of vast amounts of our industry so we can save a couple dollars buying made in China junk at Walmart or on Amazon then smuggly bragging how smart we are because we got such a "deal" in said junk. Meanwhile millions of jobs have been lost along with the taxes and contributions to society/businesses those middle class jobs allowed. If we could go back in time to the 1960s and ask anyone alive then if China will eventually own us it would have been unfathomable to them it could even happen.

17. In the US, if it’s 500 miles or less, drive. If it’s over 500 miles, fly …

    As much as people fuss about air travel, it’s established already, reasonably priced with a little planning, and it works well. The US has no real need for a nationwide HSR system.

18. What's with the first video? That's not a high-speed train, that's sped up footage.

19. Chinese rail companies could build line from Beijing to Chicago, faster than California can build their planned one.

20. We must build modern railways in circle, so we can have many modern trains can take many passengers

21. It's amazing that the US isn't still using the horse and buggy, They won't progress because they you can' get that the people to agree on anything.

22. We can do better than capitalism!

23. Europe 10 years from now: "Our new MAGLEV trains can travel from Rome to Paris in as little as four hours!
    USA 10 years from now: "Welcome to Costco. I love you."

24. But we have the latest in weapons technology!

25. The money get to be spent to defense Korea, Japan, Australia, Europe, mideast countries, how much money left for building high speed trains?

26. Hopefully USA can catch up Laos or Tailand for high speed train.

27. Lmao don't worry…. Joe is on it!!!

28. No

29. Isnt it funny that many file lawsuits “Environmental” and try their best to stop rail lines from being built that cost them $$$$, but when its about building a Highway or freeway no such thing is done to stop it from being built?

30. We can't build hsr because we've spent the last 70 years overbuilding highways and roads.

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