fightersday asked:
I visited Japan and China recently. In Japan, I had a lot of fun riding the 'JR' Shinkansen from Osaka to Tokyo. In China, I had lots of fun riding the 'CR' bullet trains all over the beautiful countryside. However, I'm now back here in the stateside, and I have a burning question...
How come the USA doesn't have commercial passenger bullet train service?
I thought we were to greatest country on earth, according to a certain billionaire former president of ours who is now fighting to keep himself out of prison and trying in vain to get himself back into power (he wants the one P not the other P). If all the other major global powers and some non-powers have bullet trains, and we're supposedly the greatest country on earth, why do we in the USA do not have even one bullet train???
Kudos in advance for answering this question as quickly as you can.
There are several reasons but lets look at 4, Firstly, in the early 2010s, there was a push for High-speed Rail, The Obama Administration even promised to pay for several projects, most notably High-speed Rail between Chicago and Minneapolis, but the Governor of Wisconsin told Obama that he didn’t want the money to build high speed rail.
Next there’s the California High-speed Rail project which is currently building High-speed Rail between LA and San Francisco, due to outdated environmental laws, and constant suing from land owners in the central valley, the project took years to begin construction and is going wildly over budget and isn’t expected to finish with phase 1 till the late 2030s
Florida in the 80s through to the 2000s had plans for HSR between Miami and Tampa, but that was canceled due to Rick Scott being against the project and the Florida East Coast Railway refusing to cooperate
Finally there is the Northeastern Acela Corridor, which has some high speed sections but hasn’t been able to increase speeds on much of the track due to local opposition and a lack of funding, there will be some newer trains somewhat soon though that will increase speeds
