alt Hacker NewsImagine if we had passenger rail like Asia does, it would be amazing. But sadly it's all a matter of political will, the US simply does not want to create such a rail system where we can take bullet trains from NYC to LA.
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There is no world where bullet trains between NYC and LA would make any financial sense at all. The trains can't possibly go fast enough for passengers to be satisfied with the speed (even maglev isn't fast enough), and the cost of track construction and maintenance would never be paid for by ridership.
I live in Japan; bullet trains are great here, but the distances they cover are quite short by American standards. Extremely high ridership, with trains covering relatively short distances between extremely populated population centers (the Tokyo metro area has 38 million people for reference) means the trains operate at a profit. That could be done in America, maybe, but only between select cities that aren't too far apart, such as DC and NYC and Boston. Even here in Japan, no one is taking the shinkansen between far-apart cities in the north and south; they use inexpensive and faster domestic flights instead.
https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...