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You’d think the United States could break into the top 20 high-speed rail.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_railway_l...

China is up to almost 16,000 miles of track.

The fact that we’re incapable of building projects like this more affordably must be hurting our economy.

Well, in America almost everyone has a car and there's a road system that will take you anywhere you want to go. Americans don't like public transport overall, for reasons such as privacy, being able to play your music over the speakers, not having to smell the person next to you, having an interior you choose, taking the route you choose, being able to stop at Wendy's when you want, leaving to go and coming back on your own time rather than the train's... This list is much longer in reality. Plus there are planes for long distance which are already cheaper to fly San Francisco to LA than the ticket on the yet to be built train.

Americans don't like public transport overall

That, and probably the unwillingness to fund public infrastructure projects with tax money. Which, unfortunately, is inevitable with projects of such magnitude.

Well, in America almost everyone has a car and there's a road system that will take you anywhere you want to go

That's not different than any European country, which offers high speed rail (or a dense, interconnected rail system where HSR is not really viable, like Switzerland).

If anything and in my experience roads are usually better maintained in Europe. But that's probably the same problem. Maintenance costs (tax) money and that seems to be a dirty word to a lot of Americans.

You're wrong about car ownership in Europe vs U.S.

In America there's basically 1 car per person, in Europe there's one car per two persons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...

The statistics come from different sources and times, but that's what I have to work with and I don't think the true numbers are much different from this.

It's also important to note that the culture in America is quite different in Europe regarding personal space, freedom to drive endlessly and on your own time, and having the place to do these things. Europeans are used to adjusting themselves to the train's schedule, leaving the party because the last train is coming, standing on the platform and waiting for it to arrive, and cancelling plans when the train drivers union decides to go on strike. These things frustrate an American, and that is because cars have been around for about 100 years in America and people have come to expect the freedoms that cars bring them.

> ... people have come to expect the freedoms that cars bring them

this idea has some truth, but ... with higher population densities and traffic, the amount of freedom a private car offers diminishes significantly.

if the rules of the road were changed in California -- if taxes, fees, insurance and fuel costs went high enough, if metered lanes on freeways charged enough, individual car ownership would become much less desirable, even to Americans.

people, even US people, would adapt and the whole system might finally be arranged so that commuters could arrive at work on a reliable time schedule.

Again, hard to argue against wild speculation. The train is being built within our current reality and people's desires are part of that reality. Arguably, the freedom that cars provide is an incredibly powerful and beneficial thing for the happiness of Americans.

I'm not speculating about this: I and thousands of daily commuters have noticed that driving a car on the Hollywood freeway in rush hour does not feel like an experience of freedom.

At least some of those commuters find the Metro red line to downtown, which runs on a fairly reliable schedule, arrives more quickly and does feel like an experience of freedom, by comparison.

Another non speculative observation: at least some Americans who move to NYC find that selling their car is a liberating experience.

Also, not having a car, is, in some ways a way to gain some freedom: insurance and maintenance burdens decrease, time and effort to park the vehicle are eliminated, etc

This basically a chicken and egg dilemma. In some cities of US, like LA, you can't live without a car. If there is a convenient public transportation, I would prefer to take subway if the daily commute is more than 1 hour.

meanwhile, for the travel less than 1000 miles, I would prefer high speed train instead of flight, or driving by myself. As by train, it has more advantage, like comfortable seat than flight, less stressful than driving, closer to destination etc, if you have any experience by traveling with HST, you would know that. Most Chinese travel between Beijing and Shanghai, two biggest and busiest cities in China, have already proved that.

> The fact that we’re incapable of building projects like this more affordably must be hurting our economy.

IMHO, that's the really interesting story.

In general, in the US, because of the structure of local politics, the bidding process, corporate and union expertise at larding public works projects, delays related to eminent domain disputes, etc these projects are far more expensive than they are in other countries -- even old Western European social democracies like France.

> However it cannot be ignored that it is not just the cost to build that is important but maintenance will be in the billions.

The same argument can be said about roads and ports and airports. Yes, infrastructure requires maintenance. So what?

> With regards to nations who truly have a lot of established high speed rail, while the average Japanese traveler will have nearly two thousand miles of rail travel only about twenty percent is across high speed rail.

I fail to see the relevance of that statement. Yes, nations that have a long railway history still haven't replaced some lines with high-speed lines. So what?

Meanwhile, there are plenty of developed nations that have high-speed railway lines even in old suburban corridors. Yes, people do commute in TGVs every single day. Is that because they are fancy or whimsical? No, because technology has evolved in the past half century so that it's trivial to build a train capable of travelling at over 220km/h and they live in geographically convenient areas where building high-speed lines doesn't involve building many tunnels and bridges.

Isn’t the prop to have this train passed by people? Why are you bringing politicians into it?

The politicians did the lying about how much it will cost, how fast it will go, how necessary it is, and when it will be built. And they made sure the referendum with all those lies and benefits for special interest groups happened.