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"We Took a 100+ Hour Greyhound From Boston to Seattle" (www.youtube.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/videos@lemmy.world
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[–] 6 points 3 years ago (5 children)

I'm curious, why wouldn't Japan or France qualify as countries which have "built a high speed rail network of length and ubiquity that would meet their needs"? Yes, China has by far the most HSR infrastructure and world-leading HSR expertise, but surely at least a few other countries can satisfy such a mediocre standard as "meeting their needs"?

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago

    Both Japan and France have great high speed rail systems, but they are on par with a built it California High Speed Rail, maybe with connections to Nevada and Arizona. They may be national networks, but the size in the USA would put them more at the size of an individual state.

    The scale of HSR required to take a trip like shown in the video would need to be on a system the scale of China's system, not Japan or France.

    And note that I didn't say that high speed rail in the USA is bad, just that it probably wouldn't be one full network; there would likely be gaps in coverage.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    They mean meeting the needs of the US. France is the size of Texas. What works in France doesn't translate to the US because of our sheer geographic size. China is the only country with high speed rail that compares in geographic size to the US.

    But we absolutely could and should have high speed rail corridors that cover the east coast and west coast separately.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Exactly. The USA should have high speed rail, but it isn't going to be one continuous network. We also shouldn't set the expectation for transcontinental high speed rail trips as the marker for success because that is going to lead to poor investment in HSR.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    Yeah honestly northeast corridor is the way to do it and just explode the investment in the DC to New York space.

    After that it can expand north and south to cover more of the East Coast. Hopefully west coast can do their own and then maybe express train connections to cities in the center to fill in over time

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