Yeah I’m in the USA just jealous that they have trains in Spain.
US is too big and too sparsely populated both on a large scale and small scale for trains like Europe, Japan and China.
There's a part where no one talk about, and that's the infrastructure within the city are not conducive to trains. People get to a train station and they need to get around and unless you're talking about New York they really just need another car.
This in comparison to European and Asian cities where your friend can just post you an address and you can use public transit all the way to the last block.
US land is amazingly well suited for HSR and cities are well suited for subways. We also have the money. The only problem is political.
I’m grateful to live in a country where having a vehicle is normal and not just for the wealthy class. I’m happy to not be packed onto public transit if I want to take the family to the beach or go hiking or something.
You don't need to. It's not like those countries with extensive train networks don't have cars and interstate highways. They do and people use them. The point is that in those countries, cheap options exist for all income brackets and all use cases.
In America, it's a car or bust.
And are you saying poor people in America wouldn't want a cheaper mode of transportation as an option?
The US has a massive setup cost problem, any significant infrastructure project takes years of regulatory hurdles and then legal challenges as competitors and NIMBYs try everything they can to slow things down.
Thus ending up being way more expensive than countries where they still have slums to ruthlessly tear down or land to seize from small-time farmers to make room for new infrastructure (not to imply that the way it works in the US is much better).
This is exactly what I meant by political problems.
> Thus ending up being way more expensive than countries where they still have slums to ruthlessly tear down or land to seize from small-time farmers to make room for new infrastructure (not to imply that the way it works in the US is much better).
India razed slums and farms for trains, the US razed forests and farms for interstates. It's the same thing. Slums in India have a land value to them. The government doesn't get that land for free. Just pay out property owners market value+20% for infrastructure and build the thing that is so direly needed.
Ship has sailed, it usually works in the reverse. People aren't coming back from suburbia because there's stations where they don't need cars.