And annoying stuff like human rights

The US does? The black neighborhoods they destroyed to build highways would like to speak to you

It gets worse, for the national HSR they've doubled down with a privatized high-end train line (think first class, private lobbies for premium etc) with a horrible "track" record in Florida.

Dubbed the deadliest train per mile in America by the Associated Press, Brightline has killed dozens of people (link)

New York-based Fortress Investment Group, which owns Brightline via its Florida East Coast Industries (FECI) unit, has pursued a strategy of mixing its infrastructure play with large-scale, real estate investments. Coral Gables-based FECI has developed multifamily and office buildings near Brightline stations and sold most of these projects to institutional investors at nine-figure prices. It also has a sizable portfolio of land and real estate holdings along the train line.... “I think Brightline was a real estate play. I think it always has been,” said Bradley Arendt (link)

So a deadly company that refuses safety precautions (forced the government to fund further safety regulations), and is managed and owned by huge financial companies that own the real estate making their own government funded mini-monopoly rail line and estates! Oh yeah, they're way over budget and losing money fast, but if they can just get that sweet "build back America" funding they can squeeze the company for a few more years before the high priced investors can cut ties and run with their profits.

I could go on for days probably talking about Brightline, might have to do a complete write up one of these days to show how nasty and deep all the crap goes with our politics and influences. Just make it a national service, this "private" sector for public utilities has got to be moved on from.

Both. It's both.

Maybe republicans are right about immigrants /s

The man is a monster and his sycophantic followers are incapable of critical thought.

I wonder if that Musk fellow has a vested interest in car sales or something. Maybe he has ties to some sort of car company. 🤔

Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.

Nah, I'm mad at Elon

The California high speed rail project is still being built, legislators didn't shut it down. Check out the spring 2024 update.

Now it probably should be faster, but progress is being made.

...what now?

"That's communism!"

No, really.

For example, Minnesota (and to a lesser extent Wisconsin) keeps planning light rail/high speed rail projects but they keep getting killed by Republicans who take office. Why do they kill it? Mostly i don't think they say, or make some vague claims about "budget" (while providing no actual explanation or justification). However, if you listen to their base it's because they believe trains are communist and communism is bad.

• Having to buy out private land owners who will take the government to court which can take years to decades to figure out
• Having to do environmental assessment of all the land that will be impacted by the high speed rail then having to re plan the route to avoid sensitive areas and wildlife which would take years if not decades to complete
• Having to raise taxes or shift infrastructure funding to build the rail line
• Contracting out the work to private companies that will inevitably raise costs dramatically because it's a government project
• Having to negotiate with state and local governments that will want (or not want) the rail line to go through their town, city and state.
• If the route is going through a mountainous region having to build massive tunnels (not unheard of just more money and longer build time)
• Contracting out companies to build the rail cars specifically and having them work closely and accurately with the companies building the rail lines.
• If the rail line is going through Texas and is going to use electricity then the government will have to negotiate with the Texas electrical grid, probably demand that they do a better job of keeping it online.
• Promoting the rail line enough so that it gets used more
• Dealing with oil, gas, automotive, and airline lobbies along with all the secondary and tertiary companies and industries that rely on those industries that will lobby to keep it from going through.

This is all just stuff that came off the top of my head. I don't know if it is all valid or not.

Don't get me wrong I would fucking love to have a extensive, reliable high speed rail in the US I just don't think it will happen without huge push from the voters and I'm skeptical that will happen.

Can't have nice things for poor people.

Rich people will just fly everywhere.

I lived in Korea for a while and the biggest difference is how our cities are set up from the get go.

Korean cities are dense. NY dense. Buildings generally go up instead of out. Shops on the base floors, but also a lot of commercial buildings with 5+ levels of shops.

You generally don't have to walk more than a mile in any direction to get anything you need at any hour of the day, even in smaller satellite cities. There's usually at least a corner shop or two within a few hundred feet of your apartment entrance.

Subways are generally within a 10~15 minute walk. That connects you to anywhere in the greater Seoul area. Cabs are plentiful, you can hail one down on any major street in minutes if not seconds if you're in a hurry. The cities are designed around walking. Wide sidewalks, overpasses everywhere, and the density makes it so anywhere you go feels a bit like walking in an outdoor shopping mall would in the US. You can't walk more than a quarter mile without hitting another cluster of shops.

The area I lived in probably had a 100+ shops in a 2 mile(?) radius and it was a smaller city in the outskirts of Seoul called Buchun. Everything from smaller corner stores to chain restaurants & Korean versions of multi-story Walmart/Costco etc. I'm guesstimating a bit, but I never walked longer than 30 minutes to get to anything I needed.

Sure, you can drive, but walking works just fine. No one NEEDS a car if you live in a city in Korea.

The high speed rails just complements all this infrastructure to connect the cities. We don't have any of the other stuff necessary to really make this work the same way. That last mile is the killer. If you need to drive to the rail, ride it, get off and find another car to your final destination, most folks would just opt to drive the whole way. Especially if you also factor in the return trip, or the need any degree of flexibility.

In the US, high speed rail would almost function like a plane. In Asia, it's more like... one part of a comprehensive public transportation system.

I live in Austin in one of the expensive areas considered to be 'walkable', but the closest bagel shop from my house is still a 10 minute walk away. If I want to get to the breakfast place I like, it's 20 minutes from my front door. Only thing I pass in between those two are a bunch of tattoos shops and I think a yoga studio, and some architect firm. Oh, I guess we have a few food trucks now too. They're usually closed in the mornings when I walk anywhere.

The rest of it is just houses. If I wanted to get to the downtown rail station, it's a 30 minute walk and I have to walk under the highway and get accosted by homeless folks on occasion. (Most of them are cool, there's a few that are not).

Oh, and there's no shade anywhere and it's Texas. Five months out of the year we hit 90~100+ degrees and you'd need a change of clothes by the time you get anywhere you're going.

American cities are just not designed for it. We have everything spaced too far apart.

It is disingenuous to argue that High Speed Rail is profitable in China

Good thing that's not what OP or anyone else in here was arguing. Like you said, it's a public good. It doesn't need to be profitable to serve the public interest. In fact, profits run counter to the public interest. So why bring it up?

HSR is much more difficult in the US as the rights of private property are respected and projects need to pass a much higher threshold of review

We have eminent domain, and HSR has been built in Europe despite stricter envirobmental regulations.

There are many major infrastructure projects in China that turn out to be poorly planned and executed years after they have been completed.

Wow. Couldn't happen in the US. Never.

It is disingenuous to argue that High Speed Rail is profitable in China

High efficiency public infrastructure doesn't add economic value because it won't show up on China's domestic ledger as "profit for shareholders". You heard it here first.

government and Industry are often one in the same and the lack of good public accounting at Chinese companies makes any reports from HSR advocates out of china questionable

Yes, we have data to argue there is an economic benefit, but DON'T TRUST IT! Everything good you read about China is a lie and everything bad you read about China is a ten times worse.

HSR is much more difficult in the US as the rights of private property are respected

LO-fucking-L.

• In Iowa, an ongoing saga regarding a network of carbon dioxide pipelines proposed by carbon-capture companies has united predominantly conservative farmers and environmental activists on the issue of taking privately owned land for corporate gain.

• Despite feeling intimidated, the Averitts wouldn’t sell their 135-acre property, along with a 100-acre commercial site the family had hoped to develop. The company, Dominion Energy, ended up claiming the land anyway via eminent domain, the power to take private land for “public use,” which in recent years has been invoked with increasing frequency by oil and gas companies seeking to build new pipelines. After Dominion and its ACP partner, Duke Energy, canceled the Atlantic Coast Pipeline in July 2020, the Averitts, who had been in the process of challenging the company in court, regained control of their land, but not without a serious financial and emotional toll. Others along the ACP’s route—often rural communities that are disproportionately BIPOC, low-income, or both—have fared even worse in the aftermath of the canceled pipeline, which was going to run from West Virginia to North Carolina, and elsewhere in the country.

And that's just the modern stuff. Google "Robert Moses" if you really want to get a taste for American style private property protections.

thunderf00t is a raging misogynist. Like he made hundreds of gamergate videos obsessing over this one woman for daring to criticize the portrayal of women in videogames

Adam Something does a good job of savaging Musk's bullshit as well, along with lots of other "tech bro" bullshit in the same vein (and no misogyny that I'm aware of). He does talk a bit too fast, however, so I always slow his videos down a bit and they come out alright.

i wouldn't trust USA to build train rails. have you seen how many derailments and bridge collapses they got?

Their HSR has been running a decade at this point, with a better safety record than the US. You don't have to 'trust' them to do anything, it's already done.

Yeah the ghost cities are shit, but that's an entirely different topic

China would be such a nice place to live if it wasn't such a bad place to live