The US is more spread out, tilting in favor of air, and local rail is less abundant + our interstate highway system is more mature + gas is much cheaper, tilting in favor of cars. The value of rail is squeezed from both sides.
Now comes along a great technology that can bootstrap off existing infrastructure (road), offers the same benefit of time not wasted focusing on the road, whose cost burden is shouldered by those that use it (purchasing cars), and can incrementally be improved over time (higher speeds, drafting, separate lanes, etc). That further puts the squeeze on travel between shorter distances, which can make the promised SF-LA trip in <6 hours (instead of 4* via air) that can be reduced to 4 over time with faster speeds.
Driverless tech doesn't even need to work in places outside the controlled environment of a highway for these benefits to appear. Politicians could make it happen a few years sooner by making it more appealing (much as they did with hybrid carpool stickers) by creating a special driverless car lane on highways, separated by cement barriers. Although I think that's not as elegant as just bootstrapping on carpool lanes, it is possible now and would definitely spur car companies to upgrade their driverless systems to whatever requirements would be needed for that environment.
Certain parts of the US (east coast corridor) seem to me to be the only places in the US that could actually benefit from the HSR equation, but they have big right-of-way issues and there's a lot of political coordination that needs to happen. Amtrak's been trying for decades.
* Air calculation: 1.5h pre-flight, 1.5h flight, 1h post-flight
The US shouldn’t be so spread out.
These rail projects are for the long term. In the long term, we should be looking at increasingly dense urbanization, some day decreasing ability to use debt financing to build and maintain infrastructure, and the end of large-scale use of petroleum fuel. We need to make less stuff work for more people.
I don’t see why I would want to be in an isolated cocoon for hours with no room to stand and no bathroom when there is a viable alternative.
However, it’s still possible that the California HSR project is a terrible plan. It’s not that fast for how much it costs, and everybody’s saying it’s going to be even more expensive than the leaders are letting on. We really should be making airports less difficult to use. The terrorists won 9/11.
Driverless cars are a cool tech demo, with the possibility of decreasing the awful death toll of driving private automobiles and the tragic misuse of life in traffic, but it’s not a great long-distance option. The average car trip, with no carpoolers, takes too much space per capita. The normal commute should not involve lots of driving.
imagine though that there's a fleet of self-driving cars ready to take you to HSR stops. best of both worlds?
Presenting self-driving cars and HSR as mutually exclusive is a false dichotomy.
Blacktop does not last. The maintenance costs for our road system far outstrip our commitment to maintain them even today.
HSR, though expensive to install, has an advantage in longevity.