[rrggrr]

Rail is a special case because land issues and near zero indigenous maglev tech in the US. Think roads, airports, train stations, bridges, dams, etc. And, as importantly, the US doesn't export subsidize infrastructure companies and projects as does France or Japan. The exception is energy infrastructure.

[afuchs]

I'm confused?

What do you mean by land use issues?

Japan isn't using maglev for commercial high-speed service yet. Japanese high-speed trains have steel wheels that make contact with a steel track, just like regular trains. Their maglev trains are limited to experimental research and development [1], or low-speed urban transit [2] (which was built as a showcase for a World's Fair).

France's and Japan's high speed trains are based on the same technology as their lower speed counterparts, including American freight rail. How does a differing level of experience maglev technology cause a difference between different countries' quality of infrastructure, when that technology isn't being used?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L0_Series

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linimo

[serhei]

Incidentally, Japan's maglev project (unlike their ordinary trains) is being done at ridiculous costs and ridiculous timeframes ($80 billion USD spent over 31 years -- 2014-2045 see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen). Seems like the technology is very tricky and 90% of it will have to be built in tunnel.

They can support this because their ordinary transit infrastructure is built out already, the Tokaido high-speed line is at capacity (trains every 5 minutes at peak hours)! Effectively, they have the money and they've run out of more reasonably scaled infrastructure projects to build.