Can you cite the reasons that these large countries are capable of building high speed rail while the US is not?

Where is the recent innovation in US air travel? It has gotten considerably worse over the last 30 years. Supersonic passenger flights stopped in 2003 around the same time that TSA added hours to every flight.

China's rail does not operate at enough profit to pay off the original construction let alone for future maintenance.

What you are referring to for flight is government policy around it, not the capabilities of flight. Supersonic was not feasible because nations didn't allow breaking the sound barrier over populated areas. Again government restriction, not a limit of the technology. Air flight does not require eminent domaining peoples land to add new destination. In fact new air travel destinations/destination changes/capacity gain growth over the last 30 years occurred in ways that rail never could.

It's almost as if the development of technology and politics are interrelated. Half the cost of building US airports were subsidized by the government when they added them.

Path of development and real estate prices are related to accessibility. Most of the US is not accessible, there are an equal number of paved and unpaved roads in miles. Consider receiving mail in a rural area where it's going to be 3-5 days for an amazon prime package and the closest store is 30+ miles. If you randomly sample locations in the US you'll find that is actually really common, it's just not experienced by many people. Rail networks aren't about going on vacation, it's about developing real national infrastructure that creates efficiencies that boost multiple parts of the economy.

No, not possible at all.

Intentional investments in R&D led to more fuel-efficient and long-range aircraft technology such as the B787 and A350 which allowed new point-to-point routes between cities that were never before possible, abandoning the hub-and-spoke model of the past.

Like Auckland-NYC nonstop.

Imagine if they had to build rails between those two.

Because for some reasons, loud explosion noises causes stress in people and they don't want that.

It is not a arbitary government regulation.

"China's rail does not operate at enough profit "

And when you add in the global cost of flying, (climate change) maybe public infrastructure does not need to generate profit, to be beneficial?

Should Acela be faster? Probably! But people should be clear-eyed about what the reality of the situation is.

Where's the logical argument against high speed rail that is based on physical limitations of reality and not simply uh its infeasible because policy?

If there was HSR between Houston and Dallas, sure I'd take that. Same for Dallas to Kansas City or something similar to that I'd love that. But that's about the distance where even the extra wait and commute time for the airport balances out the fact the plane is going to be flying straighter and faster. In the end I'm not going to take HSR to go to Orlando or Montreal from Dallas, I'm going to fly.

Why not? Include comfortable, silenced sleeper cabins and I rather take spend a night in a bed and wake up the next morning rested and fresh, than going through the stress of flying.

So the top destinations out of Dallas are Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Austin, Phoenix, Houston, Orlando, Chicago, and New York.

So HSR would potentially be competitive with maybe two of the top 10 destinations when comparing to air travel for DFW. I'm a proponent for the Texas HSR projects, but I don't think it's going to really radically change how most North Texans travel.

Partially because of the above (only 2 of the top 10 flights), but also because while it'll be nice to just take a train instead of driving to Houston, I'm probably going to have to rent a car or do a lot of ride hailing once I get there. Outside of a small section of a lot of these cities downtown areas you practically need a car to get around or be willing to make a lot of sacrifices.

So I'd love to take HSR to visit family in Clear Lake. I could take DART from my home, HSR to Houston, take METRO to the Bay Area Park and Ride, and then...walk several miles with my family's luggage a few miles on maybe paved sidewalks with a few kids under 3. Ride hailing is pretty much out of the question with little kids, good luck on them having adequate child seats available.

But I'll still champion and argue for the Texas HSR projects, even though I might personally not use it a lot. Maybe transit will improve where I want to go. I hope so. And even then I'll still probably take it to watch a Silver Boot series sometime. But there will be others who will be able to leverage it, and that means fewer cars on the road for me for these trips I'm somewhat forced to choose the car.

But I don't like people acting like there's no logical reason for HSR to be the dominant way for people to travel in the US. As we both agree, trips like DFW-NYC don't make much sense taking a train for most travellers.

> from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (known by airport code "DFW") and Dallas Love Field Airport ("DAL")

Intellectually honest debaters, which should be what we're striving for. This is a really disappointing response.

This could be the greatest rebuttal to an argument I've ever seen on this site.

One was colonised by wankers for nearly 100 years who built the railways, and they have been in maintenance mode ever since. The infrastructure is decrepit and people still ride on the outside of the trains in some cases.

China has basically no safety standards. They can crash a train, hose it off without a care, and build a new one in its place with no improvements. They continue to have construction-related industrial accidents equivalent to the 1800s in the West.

Russia is currently under embargo because they started a war and can't import parts to properly maintain their fleet of modern Western aircraft.

The irony is two of the three countries you mentioned are in the top 5 fastest growing aviation markets (India being #2).

Everyone should be mad that we dug this hole and then climbed out of it, but people shouldn't pretend that we're still in the hole.

Train stations and airports are where they are. Lots of them are quite close to downtowns. Others aren't. Nobody's changing their locations in existing large cities.

There are plenty of cities where the nearest airport is closer than the nearest long distance rail station. There are plenty of cities where they aren't.

Billy Bishop is pretty convenient, I think it's quite unusual in that respect. But for the same reason, it's rather controversial and limited in the airplanes it can take, and its future is often in doubt.

The US has many areas with suitable population density to be served by high speed rail, and with more accomodative geography than Japan. It's just that in the US, it was considered fine to use government funds and authority to bulldoze land for the interstate system, but not for high speed rail.

It costs money and time to build HSR. Fine. The J(N)R director who ran the shinkansen project literally lied to multiple levels of government to shield the (2x+) budget overruns. He resigned and then within a year of it opening he was given a medal for extraordinary contributions to Japan.

> Because nationwide high speed rail isn't as easy - or practical - as you think.

Who is claiming that it is easy? However, it is practical! It takes 6 hours to drive Tokyo to Osaka; it's 2hr by train. Trains leave every 5 minutes.

A west coast HSR network is just obviously practical! Beijing-Shanghai HSR is 1300km; SF to Seattle would be the same. It'd be 4-5h on a train. Right now it's 2.5 hours on a plane plus a recommended 1.5 hours for security and boarding plus transfers on each side--I'd rather take a high speed train If I could! SF to LA could be ~3h. 90 minutes on a plane plus lead time and transfer times and it's competitive. Again.

> There are US states similar in size to EU countries with comparable rail networks.

Oh, which ones?

So just to be clear you are saying at best the time difference between flight and HSR would be minimal - so where is the payoff for the billions the infrastructure would take to build. If it's purely capacity couldn't you spend a fraction of the billions you'd spend on the new infrastructure to bolster the existing system?