Why doesnt the U.S. have more high speed trains?

Question

I would love to be able to get one and travel between major cities in half the time it would take in a car. I have also heard that some are using magnets to levetate them using less energy.

Answer 1

the US does have a high speed train: the Acela from Amtrak.   But it sucks and doesn't go as fast as European trains.  And it's mad expensive.

Answer 2

Cities in the USA are a lot farther apart.  That makes the track more expensive for the number of people it'll serve.

That makes the cost a lot harder to swallow, for a project that "might not succeed" (yeah right) and which would compete with for-profit companies.  In the hyper-commercial USA, that's considered "bad".

Cities are farther apart, so there's a lot more tough terrain between them.  The USA is not French farmland, so you're talking about some fairly immense tunnel projects, or time-consuming mountain running.  Just a Chicago-San Francisco track would involve more tunnel work than the Gotthard Base Tunnel, and that's just one line.

Cities are also farther apart, so travel times would be longer.  Even at TGV speeds, San Francisco to Chicago is still a 24 hour ride, can that compete for convenience with airplanes?  Still, no.  So you have 2000 miles of unbelievably expensive track no one wants to ride.  Great.  

Between city pairs it makes a lot more sense... Sacramento-SF-LA, Dallas-Houston, Portland-Seattle, Chicago-Detroit, Cleveland-Cincinatti-Columbus, Miami-Orlando.  High speed rail is being evaluated in all those corridors.

Keep in mind, the existing railroads in the U.S. are excellent compared with Europe and Japan, so it's often practical for us to improve the track we have rather than building whole new track.  And our law allows that; any railroad can be rated for up to 200mph just for meeting tighter maintenance specs and better signaling. That's not as spectacular as cutting the ribbon on a new billion dollar line, but it can be just as fast.

Answer 3

Partly because no passenger train in the US has ever made any money, they exist only because of politicians who think people want them. So the more money spent on trains the less that is spent on highways. Even in heavy commute areas they can only carry a tiny percentage of the commuters.

Answer 4

I hope you're writing an essay because it could be a very easy one.

In the US their are multiple angles to look at:  current track, capital, DOT/FRA, Labor Unions/employees and land.

The current track gauge, quality, and age is different than those European's and Chinese high speed trains' track.  The standard gauge in the US is 4 ft 8 1/2 inches.  Britain's high speed rail is 7 ft 01/4 inches, to help the lower center of gravity of the train.

Why don't they just move the rail over?  The current US trains are specifically built to 4ft 8 1/2inches, its to do with the wheel flange/axle/dynamics/forces-- all to do with speed that makes less likely to not derail at 70-79MPH on the curves.  Also note, the rail on the ground is very heavy, 100+ pounds per 3 feet(thats how they measure it, don't know why).  and to top that, all the new rail that I've seen come in Ribbons, like 150ft or so long.  It would take a crane years to move all that rail over.  Let alone replacing the ties to the new gauge.

Capital.  When the railroads were first being built in the Wild Wild West, the federal government wanted to connect the entire US so bad that they paid the railroads by the mile of track.  Clearly, the more miles you have the more money the business got.  So they got creative and built curving track and   pretty much cheated the gov' of some money until they found out and changed the rules.  Anyways, the whole point is that building a railroad from scratch takes a lot of money(capital) and who is going to foot the bill?  If anyone was smart enough with a few billion laying around they would.

Department of Transportation has an administration strictly for the railroads.  Its called the Federal Railroad Administration(FRA).  Over the years and after many many deaths, the FRA has strictened their rules for the railroad and railroad employees.  They have laws with possible fines and everything else.  FRA is like the DMV of railroads.  I dislike going to the DMV, so how would a business like to deal with the FRA?

Labor unions.  Great idea to keep a job at a respectable pay.  But they have contracts with each railroad, some times the date of hired(seniority) determines by the amount of pay.  Railroaders get hired and die or retire from the same railroad typically.  So where are you going to find veteran knowledgeable employees for the fast pace train if they haven't had a different jobs in the past 10-30 years?

If you haven't notice the shrinkage of land isn't that bad, but they have artificially raised on the prices on every lot/acre.  Plus every piece of the land in the US is owned by SOMEONE.  Unlike how it was back when they first built railroads.

The current class one railroad's have a lot of land mass that they do not use beside the current tracks, but even that would cost a fortune to buy/lease.  (( encase you're wondering, they don't pay property tax for the railroad land **GASP**))

I dare say that's my 85cents on new high speed trains.

Answer 5

because the gvnmt would want to run it so it would be all   fu*# ed -up.And it would cause them to lose profits that they are making in the Oil Industry now.