I’ve said this for a long time: rail infrastructure is just too expensive to be worth it, with a small number of exceptions (Japan for example). Even people in Europe prefer to fly or drive because of costs.
We have the technology and means to do better than we ever have before in every area; and at least here in the US, we're ripe to have this infrastructure put in place. We need a true Green New Deal, not a watered-down bill that allocates funding to the few to accomplish nothing or something small-scale and localized.
If we added thorough, accessible high speed rail infrastructure for transportation AND freight here in the US, we could reduce our fossil fuel emissions and dependence by a pretty large factor. And make travel more dignified and safe. It's absolutely ridiculous how we ship and receive goods - and it's absolutely ridiculous that the best means of travel from any place more than a few hours away is essentially just air. The roads are laughably bad, and they are clogged to the brim with tractor-trailers. It's time to stop.
The real, measurable cost of continuing fossil fuel dependence is higher than we know or predict most likely, and justifying continuing this solely because doing better is "expensive" or "problematic" just shows the lack of leadership we have and the massive tumors that we need to excise. The amount of jobs that a national infrastructure deal would create are staggering, and the new, more sustainable economies of scale that would develop around it are priceless.
There is so much low hanging fruit in the US its not even funny. If you want to invest money and get people in rail, start with proper S-Bahns and combine that with the historic rail network outside of the cities.
Add trams to your cities and proper bus service with priority lines and priority signaling.
And of course the absolutely brain dead land use and zoning policies in the US are the real issue even if you build public transit.
Worry about those things before dreaming up schemes of high speed trains.
That said the Great Lakes region high speed rail, combined with Canada would make a huge amount of sense.
People preference is why I wait 2 minutes at a crosswalk to get to my local park.
Cost can be solved. I'm not sure car dependence can be.
Rail is preferable to planes on most places you want to go in Europe. And the places where its not, its because the rail infrastructure hasn't been built out. This is because of 60 years of overinvestment in roads and 60 years of under investment in roads.
Even Switzerland extreme successful increase in rail was born out of a necessity and a restricted budget. So much more could have been done.
Once rail infrastructure is built, its operation is efficient and much of the infrastructure lasts for 100+ years.
Its funny how people who like roads are all like 'train so expensive' and yet I see road dependent countries (like the US) with roads that look more like the Ukraine then anything else. If its so cheap why can't you maintain it?
> drive because of costs
Because drivers don't actually pay for the massive investment in roads over the last 60 years. Cars have been given incredibly valuable space for free in most cities. The list of things like that goes on and on.
And driving also leads to an absutly insane amount of death and other health defects that society is paying for.
Is it like 40000 deaths alone from cars in the US? Yeah fantastic that people safe some money over rail in some condition.
If you actually analyses effect on society as a whole, walking, biking and rail are all utterly fantastic investments.
But with the train, I went multiple places over multiple days, going to Berlin, Hamburg, Kopenhagen, Gothenburg and Oslo.
A friend of mine travled even more, a monthly interrail is even better.