> A lot of people think high speed rail would be cheaper to flying, in reality it's often the same or more than flying today.
It's a lot more comfortable, and you end up in a downtown location instead of an airport on the outskirts of the city.
And the only reason train stations are downtown is due to historical reasons. If you had to make a 35 track train station today in your average American city, it would very likely not be downtown. Even in China these train stations are often on the outside loop of the city.
In Seattle, the trains used to run through the city. The corridors are still there, but the new light rail system avoids using them, making it far, far more expensive.
They recently dug a new transit tunnel under the city. The best use for the old tunnel they could think of was to fill it with the rubble dug out of the new one.
The expensive tunnel boring machine was sold for scrap.
I don't understand the thought processes involved in these decisions.
To compare travel times you can easily consider a 2-hour advantage to the train.
Tokyo to Kyoto one way is 13,080 yen ($120) for the cheapest ticket, for a distance of 226 miles. About the same distance as DC to New York.
A lot of people think high speed rail would be cheaper to flying, in reality it's often the same or more than flying today. And it then costs billions of dollars to build the rail.
As for subways, that unfortunately seems more like a corruption/mismanagement problem in the U.S unfortunately. Our subway systems aren't exactly cheap to build, but are often dirty and late like you say. I would much rather put effort into fixing problems with how we spend the money today, then throwing money at high speed rail.
At $240 round trip, though it's great you could take the train in only 2 hours, it's not as if your average citizen in Kyoto is going to head down to Tokyo on a whim.