| > There are no sound reasons for investing in passenger rail in the US now. There are no viable political reasons to invest in high-speed rail. Americans love their cars, the interstate highway system is in place, that's a lot of inertia to overcome with economic arguments. In Europe and Japan, on the other hand, high-speed rail is booming. One of the reasons is that the prior infrastructure was substantially destroyed in WWII, allowing more options than we Americans have. Also, it's possible that Europeans aren't quite as crazy about cars as we are. > Building better, faster trains is hardly a guarantee that they will be used. That's certainly true, and it's probably a big argument against high-speed rail, especially when you read the recent history of Amtrak, which has always struggled to find riders. On the other hand, Amtrak has always been a "Me too" mode of transport, a niche, a novelty for the curious. If we were deciding this without an interstate highway system and a huge, well-established car culture, I think it would be a different debate. |