This is a sample of the terrain and property between Bakersfield and Merced. There are approximately 2 million people in the south Central Valley.

If the state of California COULD NOT AFFORD to build high speed rail on flat, dry, relatively cheap agricultural land, explain to me how you expect the Northeast to be able to afford to build it one on the Boston Washington corridor where you have rivers, bays, roads, towns, freeways, historic landmarks, and a population of 53 million?

They can’t even widen the highways and the governments own the land. It’s might be a necessity, but it ain’t happening ever. Too much land to buy, too many buildings and houses to destroy.

GF

Progessives, lovers of NIMBY, protest, and plaintiffs attorneys, are really getting hoist on their own petard on this one. They'll have to ban obstructionism which delays their agenda... first amendment was never intended to be manipulated to delay PROGRESS of course.

The Honolulu Rail project is years behind schedule and doubled in budget. It is projected at $10Billion and nowhere near completion.
Prime example of political projects gone awry.

That’s for a 20 mile line of LIGHT RAIL that will have a top speed of 40mph but with starting and stopping at 21 stations will average average less than 20 mph.

https://projectcostsolutions.com/les...-rail-project/

IF they get it finished and get their projected annual ridership it will carry approximately 1% of the traffic along that route. By the time this is finished this project will have cost $13,700 for each citizen of Oahu and will cost each citizen an additional $180 annually in taxes to maintain it. Plus fares, the price of which hasn’t yet been decided.

If new railroads are impossible, how about giant busses?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bPpBGsFddao

Who cares about high speed trains, airplanes, or automobiles?

Powered pogo-sticks is where it's at. (at the end of the dangling participle and or preposition, but I digress).

A high-speed rail service would make a lot of sense between Houston and Dallas.

https://www.railway-technology.com/f...speed-railway/

Probably, distance is about right. There are some niche markets like that. And the land is very flat and mostly rural, and TX can probably easily evict anyone who doesn't want their house torn down in the name of progress (can't do that in CA... ).

We already HAD high speed rail in the NE US, and all over the country, starting in the 1920s. They went the same speed as the Acela does today...it is slow speed.

High speed rail is the most efficient people transportation from about 150-650 miles. For maximum efficiency in Our Economy, we SHOULD have high speed rail in a number of corridors.

Japan is planned maglev from Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka. It turned out it would cost $1B USD per mile. They are ALREADY building it. They ran the numbers, and it showed that spending that massive amount of Federal money, would drastically help the economy, overall.

We are stupid. We gave up our lead in high speed rail. We gave up our lead in Solar, Wind, Electric cars, steel, etc., etc. Now, instead of building high speed rail in the US, we will be forced to buy it from another country. Now, instead of Mexico having us build a massive solar facility, they are having China do it.

Our Government decided that letting GM, Standard Oil, and Firestone destroy Our US rail system, was a good idea. It wasn't. And now, we don't have high speed rail anywhere in the US, and Our Economy is suffering because of it...