15
Does this explain why there are no bullet trains in the USA?
(piefed.social)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
15 points (74.2% liked)
Asklemmy
54310 readers
512 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
The difference everyone always ignores is that most of Chinese infrastructure is new. For the US they'd need to buy people out of their land, build new tunnels and bridges, and disrupt so many things to implement high speed rail.
You can't just leverage the existing rail network because they have curves and grades that are incompatible with high speed rail (northeast corridor has 30-40mph limits on some curves).
In addition you're competing with airplanes which are already proven and support current travel demands. And even if you could get the rail implemented there isn't any guarantee it'll be any cheaper than flight (meaning low usage). As it stands today going from major hub on Amtrak can be more expensive and takes an equal amount of time (when accounting for security/etc.)