rickair7777

Like any high-speed train scheme, the theory looks great but gets bogged down in practical considerations.

Infrastructure is the biggy...it can cost billions per mile since ultra-high speed paths have to be fairly straight and level. On top of that you have issues with right-of-way and imminent domain, and conflicts with existing infrastructure. Again it's harder because it HAS to go in a straight line..if you build a new road you can just do an overpass over the existing highway, but in the case of something like this EVERYTHING along the route would have to be cleared out of the way.

So who's going to pay for it? Typically schemes like this propose that gubmint do all the heavy lifting, clearing the right-of-way, and heavily subsidizing the infrastructure...of course the instigators then expect to roll in and reap profits over operating costs without having to worry too much about the capital investments, conveniently covered by the taxpayers via massive bonds.

And then there's security...any high-speed transport is vulnerable to terrorism, the inherent velocity in the system does all the work, all the bad guy has to do is upset the system. Airplanes are actually better in this regard, you only have to secure the terminal, not the enroute system. But any high-speed rail or tube would have to protected along it's ENTIRE route.

Even if this concept actually has a marginal benefit over the existing system the cost of implementation is so high that the ROI could easily take centuries...hard to get politicians (or most anyone) to look that far ahead.

While the current regime may have a penchant for over-the-top ideas like this, it would never survive the inevitable shift in the political winds.