Switzerland has a population larger than all but ~11 US states.
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.
I don't think rules and regulation in California are actually worse then in Switzerland.
It might also worth it to check them out
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
“Others do it even better and cheaper” makes the US failure to build and maintain infrastructure like this even sadder.
Every large country breaks things up into small chunks. No one says Vermont can't handle a school system just because it's small.
Switzerland gets along with others just fine, to the point where Italy and France used to handle their air defense on the weekends (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_702).
> The Swiss Air Force did not respond because the incident occurred outside normal office hours; a Swiss Air Force spokesman stated: "Switzerland cannot intervene because its airbases are closed at night and on the weekend. It's a question of budget and staffing." Switzerland relies on neighboring countries to police its airspace outside of regular business hours; the French and Italian Air Forces have permission to escort suspicious flights into Swiss airspace, but do not have authority to shoot down an aircraft over Switzerland.
If the swiss were able to get along with others, they wouldn't have such a reputation as racist nazis
> Switzerland relies on neighboring countries to police its airspace outside of regular business hours; the French and Italian Air Forces have permission to escort suspicious flights into Swiss airspace, but do not have authority to shoot down an aircraft over Switzerland.
They were friendly enough with their neighbors to let their own Air Force have the nights and weekends off.
Passport control when I went from France to Switzerland was someone coming onto the train and yelling “anyone not allowed in Switzerland? No? Good!”
I think they’re fine.