why doesn't America embrace high speed trains?

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Do you live in the Sacramento area? If a potential passenger lives to the west or east, and assuming the station is downtown, driving directly to the airport would take about 5 minute longer than to drive downtown. And from. the from the north the airport is only 15 minutes away.

A big problem would be finding a site to accomodate the station and parking.

Yes. At times you can get tickets all up and down the west coast on southwest for less than $75. LA is a 1:20 flight so it would still be cheaper and faster to fly than to take a bullet train.

jamintrump wrote:

It will be a disaster in CA.

Why? What's wrong about a train taking you from LA to Bay Area in 2.5-3 hours and to Sacramento in an hour more? Trains of similar distance and speed cost $20-30 in Europe. Okay even if we make it 50-60 looking at Amtrak prices. If you count all the extra time you have to spend at the airports, it'll beat flying both in terms of price and time. Driving between metropolitan areas of CA is tiresome unless you're on a road trip, don't care about time and make lots of stops

Hobbyjogger53 wrote:

jamintrump wrote:

It will be a disaster in CA.

Why? What's wrong about a train taking you from LA to Bay Area in 2.5-3 hours and to Sacramento in an hour more? Trains of similar distance and speed cost $20-30 in Europe. Okay even if we make it 50-60 looking at Amtrak prices. If you count all the extra time you have to spend at the airports, it'll beat flying both in terms of price and time. Driving between metropolitan areas of CA is tiresome unless you're on a road trip, don't care about time and make lots of stops

For the record, I voted for B.O.H. once. What momentum he had. What wasted opportunities. B.O.H. could have come in from day one and made improvements to transportation and infrastructure not only his top priority, but his only priority. Building high speed rail lines across U.S. would create so many jobs, various skilled work which would have been good for so many people. Build rail lines, more people use them than what people state in polls. Ask a Libertarian or Republican their thoughts on high speed rail lines, they usually state they would never use rail. Once built, Libertarians and Republicans use rail lines as do everyone else.

Trainlover wrote:

Just some high speed trains from A to B won't cut it. You need density to get enough paying customers and even than it has to be heavily subsidized. There is probably no train system in the world which pays for itself.

All three companies operate in profit with zero subsidy from the government. The high speed train (Shinkansen) is their most profitable, and it subsidizes local lines in remote areas.