So why do we struggle to get the infrastructure to work in dense urban areas still? Or even just “not Wyoming”?

Switzerland and California have the same population density. Why can’t CA build high speed rail?

Just for the information Switzerland neither does ;)

CA’s high speed rail isn’t high speed by European standards and it looks on the way to cancelation or significant curtailment. We can’t even manage what y’all would consider slow rail.

I don't know but Swiss isn't the only train system that works but also Spain, Italy, France. Poland has a growing better train system . The swiss system has it's advantages but it is also very expensive.

It might also worth it to check them out

I’ve ridden on several.

“Others do it even better and cheaper” makes the US failure to build and maintain infrastructure like this even sadder.

The advantage of swiss system is fast transfers. Hsr would likely break this system (no point in arriving faster if your connection gets longer by 10-15min

That's a very National focussed perspective and thus definitely a disadvantage of the Swiss train system ;)

I'm Swiss and I disagree, and so do many experts. First of all, arriving earlier is always good, because many people who get off on that stop still arrive earlier. Also, people who connect to a different mode of transit, such as Trams or S-Bahns very likely can catch an earlier connection.

In addition, if we built proper high speed lines, would could increase the frequency so much that it doesn't actually matter anymore.

So it doesn't actually break the system, it improves it.

Join us in advocating for this vision: https://swissrailvolution.ch/#goals

Switzerland has a few sections of barely-high-speed rail such as the Lötschberg Base Tunnel.

> Switzerland and California have the same population density. Why can’t CA build high speed rail?

Go find the last major Swiss route that was built, and compare its land acquisition difficulties to what happened with the California project. I'll rankly speculate that difference will be the meat of your answer.

Building infrastructure is a skill, a skill you have to constantly work on. If you do it enough and not once then you can learn to get good at it. There is a difference between a long term consistent execution of a infrastructure plan and a 'lets build high speed rail'.

I don't think rules and regulation in California are actually worse then in Switzerland.

For many reasons. Most of which have to do with government bureaucracy and incentives. HSR in California is thinly disguised jobs program with no real incentive or aim to actually build HSR.