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Lithuim t1_jaehh2e wrote

The problem is more of a cost/economic one than a construction one - there are already plenty of freight rail lines that go through nearly all of the US’s varied topography.

Making it competitive with the established airline industry and actually getting the infrastructure built without descending into a California High-Speed Rail money pit is the problem.

Cross country travel is a “solved” problem with extensive aircraft infrastructure. A system that is slower and requires additional infrastructure is a hard sell without some very obvious and immediate benefits.

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[deleted] OP t1_jaeghb6 wrote

[removed]

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breckenridgeback t1_jaeha5n wrote

> Trains already mass over/through both mountain ranges.

They do, but not on routes that could support a high-speed train for the most part. Though OP has actually missed the most difficult mountains, which are the steep, uneroded peaks of the Cascades and Sierra Nevada. To this day, only a couple of rail lines cross them, and all of those involve some pretty curvy paths except for the ones through the Columbia Gorge.

It's obviously not impossible, but it's not as simple as using existing rail lines either.

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Any-Growth8158 t1_jael866 wrote

No.

People won't pay the money when they can fly.

The reason high speed rail isn't a thing here is because the USA is a large country that is relatively sparsely populated compared to the regions in which high speed rail is used. The population density is too low in the US.

The size of Europe is only slightly larger than the US, but it has almost twice the people. China is a bit smaller than the US but has about 4 times the people.

We have a relatively high speed corridor on the east coast where the population density makes it viable.

They're trying to do it in California, but our population density is not sufficient to support it. It's a giant boondoggle for our local politicians to receive bribes and kickbacks from construction and design companies. In 2015 the projected costs for the "high speed train" (which they have since admitted wouldn't be all that high speed) was $10 billion and they were going to offer tickets for around $70 from LA to SF. The current estimate to complete the system is $100 billion and they haven't even really started so you can probably double this number. Do you think they're still going to offer $70 tickets when the costs will be over 10 times the initial estimate? Would you pay over $100 each way for a ticket on a train that'll take you 3 hours in travel time when the cost is closer to $60-$100 round trip for a 1 hour plane ride?

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Flair_Helper t1_jaep7jk wrote

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