Elon's main thing is selling cars, of course he actively opposes whatever would let people not buy a car.

He didn't even invent it.

guy who sells cars spreads FUD about competition to cars

One would think that these Atlas Shrugged -cultist would love railways.

He literally came up with the hyperloop because he was afraid of a high speed rail hurting Tesla sales.

I have a feeling the boards will try to maneuver him out before he gets too stupid with Starlink and/or SpaceX, but maybe not...

Mainly in the US, though. The automobile lobby successfully undermined many attempts at mass transit infrastructure. And the existing rail network is privatized into oblivion.

Roosevelt showed that there is a way of tackling infrastructure in the US. Only his approach has a minute slither of what can be framed to be socialist, so it'll never happen again..

see NEOM

It's an unbelievably stupid idea that's really going to happen. The prince of Saudi Arabia knows that their oil economy is going to wither away soon, so he's trying to make SA appealing to people with money and have them move there. How? By building a city that's a line 160 km (110 mi) long and 200 m (660 ft) wide...in the middle of fucking nowhere. The whole idea is based on technology that we don't have and is just terrible city planning. Look into it to get a laugh.

Did you completely ignore the US highway system built in the 50s, that created a car dependant infrastructure?

Ain't that the truth. The UKs HS2 project has just collapsed. Was supposed to a big Y shaped "network" linking London (and Europe) to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and a laughably out the way part of the East Midlands, with a new high capacity rail link.

Now it's been whittled away to just "I suppose we can link London to Birmingham then", and only then because they'd already started work on it.

I always suspected the second part would be cancelled because we never do anything that might benefit the North.

Got to be honest, after 3 years of working from home, I'd rather have faster internet than faster trains. Shame there's no timetable for that either...

I think it has more to do with the lack of democracy, especially in the US. I guarantee you could get 100 regular Joes in a room to come up with a high speed rail project. You could never get that to happen with politicians at the mercy of the ruling class.

German train network? US Highways?

Lack of education is a weakness.

You can do it through democracies. Taiwan has two sets of high speed rail systems.

Are they expensive to maintain? Absolutely. In fact they bankrupted 2+ companies until the government decided to step in and foot part of the bill. But then again, if the government isn't willing to pay for basic infrastructure, what are taxes for?

(Also as a tangent, the Taiwan high speed rail bentos are to die for. I had it 5+ years back and I still remember it. Super cheap meal in a disposable bamboo lunch box. Usually there are 1-2 choices per day. I had chicken thighs, pickled veggies, steamed pumpkin, and half a marinated tea egg. The bottom half of the lunch box was filled with rice. 10/10 would eat at a busy train station during rush hour again)

How do you explain the highways scarring every major north American city that isn't named Vancouver? How do you explain the billions of dollars spent on highway expansions every year? Rail isn't hard it just doesn't benefit the right people.

America invented rail megaprojects.

America still has the largest rail network by far. It's well more than twice the size of China's.

The only interesting note is that it's almost all freight compared to other nations' use of passenger rail.

They also provide apartments to live in permanently for those displaced in the development.

Meanwhile, the US has not built high speed rail and has tent cities.

In the case of national infrastructure, China wins hands down.

Although it's kind of ridiculous to compare California with an entire country...

I don't think America gives any shits either. They let the world's most useless CEO dictate their future

Kelo v. City of New London. That's all you need to know about the US' "care" for citizens' desires as far as eminent domain is concerned.

Isn't that a good thing? sounds like the rail is being run as a public utility rather than a business. And its still likely profitable if you average the cost over all the lines.

It makes economic sense but not financial sense. Railways are almost always profitable once considering second and third order effects.

It's the same story with Amtrak, so I'm not sure why people are so confused. Amtrak loses money on every train that's not the NEC.

Maybe too close to Trans, he don't like them either.

It unquestionably is but it sounds like you're implying that high speed rail is some sort of utopian megaproject and not a solved problem of basic, reliable and effective infrastructure that is a great bang for your buck in every country that builds it.

I understand what this comment is trying to say, but I doubt US is very big on caring about environment. Remind me, how many fracking projects?