The Chinese build a 50000 km high speed railway network in 18 years. The first high speed train was in 2008. If there is a will, there is a way. Infrastructure benefits the people.
In California for example the high speed railway was authorized in 2008 for only 795 kilometers long. The project is expected to be completed between 2031 and 2033. So in the same time frame, China build 49205 additional kilometers of track.
In western countries, everything and everyone needs to be consulted and 99% of the time a court case follows because of some animal found or it is too close to houses or whatever shit people think of, causing massive delays. Than of course there are the changes in government. Think about the Biden infrastructure bill that got scraped like the second day the current regime took over.
If you’ll allow me to nerd out a little. I love trains as much as the next guy. I also love arriving at the next station alive. Every single time. And i also want my grandchild to arrive at the station Alive. Every single time.
But by the time we start to actually lay down the tracks, a whole lot of work has already been done. Ground has to be sampled along the way. The ground has to be prepared, large boulders has to be cut/blown apart. Engineers and geologist must have had time to calculate that the ground will hold, perhaps certain areas needs to be reinforced more than others The ground has to be owned by an entity that can authorise the use of it.
Signal cables has to be drawn. There has to be space for trains to pass eachother. And then there are probably solutions to things we didn’t even know was a problem.
What’s my point? Of course trains take a lot longer than setting up a bunch of cameras on poles… I’d be more concerned if it was the opposite. And yes, I’m hillarious at parties.
FWIW, while you’re not incorrect about the build process part, this person specifically mentions the politics and paper process required just to get approval to start conducting land surveys and the like, so his point is valid too. Also fun at parties, cheers!
A huge part of the reason the planning takes effort is that you need community support. The train might be running near houses or have to demolish housing or community buildings. Similarly, flock cameras are community surveillance, and ought to require community buy-in, but that process doesn’t happen.
My view is that this is because:
- A huge part of infrastructure is less about use and more about separating the rich from the poor. A car lane keeps the driver in a little bubble, away from the poors. A train doesn’t, so the train doesn’t get built.
- A bunch of flock cameras, however, do a great job of keeping tabs on the poors. In they go. Obviously the community is for this, they want to stop criminals right?
And the Chinese build a 50000 km high speed railway network in 18 years. The first high speed train was in 2008. If there is a will, there is a way. Infrastructure benefits the people.
In California for example the high speed railway was authorized in 2008 for only 795 kilometers long. The project is expected to be completed between 2031 and 2033. So in the same time frame, China build 49205 additional kilometers of track.
In western countries, everything and everyone needs to be consulted and 99% of the time a court case follows because of some animal found or it is too close to houses or whatever shit people think of, causing massive delays. Than of course there are the changes in government. Think about the Biden infrastructure bill that got scraped like the second day the current regime took over.
The system makes it too hard to get infra built, but the movement looks bad if they seem to think building a train is as easy as it is in SimCity.
Rights of way need to be negotiated and secured. This is a big one.
This is the biggest one in the US. The right to keep the government from ruining your land makes building trains extremely difficult and the legal process is extremely expensive and time consuming
There’s a really weird misconception about Amtrak and U.S. railroads.
Amtrak is not some ordinary private corporation. It is a federally chartered corporation, with the federal government as its controlling shareholder. Its board is largely made up of presidential appointees who require Senate confirmation. So, functionally, Amtrak is a government-controlled corporation that happens to operate as a for-profit company.
The stranger part is the infrastructure underneath it.
The vast majority of Amtrak’s route mileage runs on tracks owned by private freight railroads. Those freight railroads are enormously important to the U.S. economy, but the industry is also highly consolidated. A handful of Class I railroads control enormous regional networks, creating what is essentially a series of geographic monopolies/oligopolies. Amtrak itself says 97% of its route-miles operate over tracks owned by other railroads.
So you end up with this bizarre situation where the federal government owns and controls the country’s principal intercity passenger railroad, but much of the physical railroad infrastructure it depends on is privately owned.
And expanding passenger rail isn’t as simple as “just build more trains.” You need track capacity, signaling, bridges, grade crossings, stations, dispatching capacity, maintenance facilities, etc. In many places, you’re trying to add passenger service to infrastructure that is already being used by private freight companies. Amtrak frequently doesn’t even control dispatching on the tracks it operates over.
That’s why the U.S. rail situation is so strange. We have an enormous private freight-rail system that is absolutely critical to the economy, a federally controlled passenger railroad, and an infrastructure network that has been extraordinarily difficult and expensive to expand and modernize.
It’s not simply “the government sucks at trains” or “private companies suck at trains.” The institutional arrangement itself is bizarre. The U.S. essentially split passenger and freight rail into two different systems while leaving much of the underlying infrastructure in private hands.
And then everyone wonders why building modern passenger rail is so damn difficult.
We basically do need to eminent domain the rail network. That should be government owned like the highways.
Well of course. Billionaires are motivated to keep an eye on their livestock, but aren’t motivated to make sure their livestock has a good quality of life. I mean how else can they hunt down a woman trying to have an abortion? That’s their future worker after all…
Data centers aren’t a good example. Most of them won’t actually be built.
Billionaires hate trains.
Ayn Rand screaming
Maybe we should make pods and build them really long.
Ok, and not to defend it, but it is easier to install a flock camera or build a new building than to redo a logistics network.
We should do reasons instead of ai and flock, but yeah, rebuilding a train system in the US is way more complicated and harder to do.
it is easier to install a flock camera or build a new building
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(data_center)
785,000 sq ft (72,900 m^2)
422 MW of power.
Over five million gallons of water consumed daily
I can’t imagine how that would have an impact on local logistics or civil planning.
in March 2025, xAI purchased a 1,000,000-square-foot (93,000 m2) site in the Whitehaven area of Memphis… Plans for the expansion were initially revealed by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation when preliminary plans for the facility were filed on September 18, 2024, for the project “…between xAI, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and Nucor Steel…”
Wonder why they need proximity to the nation’s largest state-operated power generation.
They are consistently full of shit
trains take 37 years of committees
If you go back and watch the second season of True Detective.
spoiler
a major plot point is gangster Frank Semyon buying up land in the desert that’s supposed to be transformed into the California HSR project. But because the plans for the train line fall through, he’s stuck with a bunch of worthless real estate. The season ends with him dying in the desert, having traded away his family, his fortune, and his dignity in pursuit of an opportunity to scam the government.
This TV show was filmed in 2014 and released in 2015. Over the subsequent 12 years, the project has been repeatedly scaled back and still hasn’t been completed.
You watched the second season?
1, 2, and 4. It was during COVID, when the pickings were a bit slim.
Everyone is talking about obtaining land and eminent domain and whatnot. …We have streets. 🤷
I’ve wondered how impactful it would be to pass a law allowing all interstates to also count as passenger train right-of-ways. Obviously there would have to be some engineering and modifications to turn a highway median into a train line but it would simplify the land rights probably.
how expensive would putting elevated rail in the median of the freeways even be?
Overpasses
Move the pillars?
I don’t know where you live but here the clearance on a standard overpass is 14’. This is well under the 12’8 needed for the highway, plus the height of the track base, plus the clearance for the train. So the train would have to be built 30’ in the air. Might as well put it above a road instead.
If you mean “put train on ground in the middle of the highway” we can also do that the hard part is getting to stations not in the middle of a highway.
I vaguely remember something from The Power Broker where an engineer said to Robert Moses with a slight change to the design, at no real cost, they would build the roads so trains could be put in easier at any time in the future. Moses said no. Cars only.
I don’t think putting at grade trains on freeways is a good idea, unless they had a reliable way of warning people minutes before a train comes through
Chicago has a system like this. The main problem is the stations in the literal middle of the highway.
Crazy idea, put the stations at the overpasses. Not all of them, obviously, but you can then make covered walk ways, and hopefully have enough land to put parking decks if needed.
But what about the cars?
They get one lane now. The rest be for the trains
Trains benefit people, those other things benefit billionaires.
And billionaires only care about one thing.
And it’s disgusting
*nods in understanding
High resolution images of everyone’s buttholes
That video reminded me when, as teenagers (16 years old or so), some friends and I were searching in internet things such as “How to shoot black holes from the ass?” or “How to shoot niggas from the ass hole?” just for the sake to fuck the day of CIA, NSA and Google employees lmfao
They were surely good times.
Username checks out.
Control.
The future of humanity!
Where humanity is defined as billionaires, everybody else are just NPC.
While this is true, trains are hard because of all the different people and companies need to give up their land to do it. Billionaires can just buy a chunk of land and then pay off local reps to look the other way and shoehorn the permits.
Trains would require
imminenteminent domain at a high rate. People generally dont like the government taking their land.Eminent* domain
Thanks, I didn’t reread this before posting.
The same people against this gladly give up their land to pipelines.
Still a bit different situation. Pipeline construction is the biggest concern for most but it’s temporary and they get paid for it. Afterwards, sure they must give easement rights to the owner but afterwards? Out of sight out of mind.
California high speed rail was something my parents voted on when I was a child.
I had this friend who was a year under me in school. Her kid voted for it too.
It still doesn’t exist. California can’t build something as modern and cutting edge as a train.
There’s a lot of good comments here, but folks are overlooking a major structural issue in the USA that IMO is largely at the root of why rail development has become so complicated - and that’s the fact that local jurisdictions are very powerful compared to many other countries. Every city and county along a route (or even potential route) gets a seat at the table, and will work to represent their constituents and economic interests. This means there’s a ton of voices advocating for completing priorities - they want rail to go through their city or county, but only if the HSR gets a stop at their preferred locations. If the jurisdiction doesn’t get what they want, they’ll often work to grenade the entire project.
China, by comparison and for example, has an authoritarian central government that can just dictate a route, displace individuals or communities in the way, and tell anyone upset to pound sand.
Not trying to say that authoritarianism is the answer. We’re well on our way to that, and it’s sure not helping things. It’s just a structural difference in the USA that makes makes such projects far more complicated, expensive, and inefficient.
I’m not saying this thing I’m saying, because we’re getting what I attribute someone else’s success to and it’s not helping
Okay? Maybe there’s some other difference.
Real trains are cutting edge though. But yeah the usa just cannot.
We can’t manage a steam engine.
no you were really good at those! it’s just that you should probably have continued after that.
Indeed, the PRR S1, and the UP BigBoy are purely American, and the first is the fastest steam engine ever, and the second is probably the engine that can handle the heaviest loads with the steepest grades, without a chain. Though there are some honorable mention locos in Madison, IN that have the world record for steepest grade without a chain, but those guys can’t haul what BigBoy can. BigBoy can’t make that particular grade, not because it is too steep, but because the rails are too narrow and curvy. Deisels can’t compete for load weights, neither can electric engines. Un/fortunately both diesel and electric beat the crap out of steam on maintenance costs and downtime.
Fucking shame about Roger Rabbit.
This guy trains
We were, we aren’t.
If California became it’s own country and stopped funding the red States it could find the funding to build anything really
The funding, yes. But if we had to actually make a train, a curb, a bollard, a bridge, a consumer gpu? We’d be so fucked.
I think the amount of funding is kind of irrelevant. Our government has lost (or perhaps given away) the ability to actually build anything without an infinite array of subcontractors all trying to fleece the taxpayer for as much money as possible. If the budget was higher, the expenses would simply grow proportionally to absorb it.
All of that is correct however I am also currently watching my government fail to be able to construct a train station along an existing track. So far the process has been going on for about six years and no one has so much has dug a hole yet. It’s barely even a construction project, they just need to pour some concrete into a rectangle and then add some stairs and call it a station. But apparently even that requires six years worth of committees.
Meanwhile in Scotland, somewhere with similarish land and planning laws. We’re electrifying the whole network, dualing large sections that were single track, removing peak fares, upgrading the rolling stock, and opening brand new stations.
Having a decent rail service is entirely a political choice. Whether those in power want to make it happen or not.
Yes, but the US has legalized corruption we call lobbying. And its working out great for us! /s
All about setting priorities. One could start a war instead, leading to closing and reopening the Straight of Hormuz, a fuckton of civilian and material casualties and having nothing achieved. What’s more “fun”??? Boys be boys, aye?
In early 2010s, I worked in a city that was planning to remove a huge useless highway section. When I moved away from that city in 2025, they were still having hearings about plans to potentially start thinking about removing that highway.
I want working trains. We fucked that one up a long time ago.
Society is based on roads. Business locations, homes, all roads.
Every time a City in the US puts in a light rail line, every target community loses their shit because it connects the poorer parts of town with the affluent parts of town. It fucks up the crime rate a bit.
People don’t want trains here because people don’t ride trains here.
People don’t ride trains here because trains don’t go from affluent houses to places where the affluent work.
affluent being median wage earners.
You get what you build. The US still builds basically only road infrastructure and as long as that doesn’t change, the US will remain underdeveloped in the personal mobility department. The country could do something about anytime but it doesn’t. Sure, it takes decades until a change in direction really starts to change the country and how it works but that wasn’t different when the country was bulldozed for cars either.
ething about anytime but it doesn’t. Sure, it takes decades until
No politician seems to want to take on a job these days that takes longer than the 2 allowed presidentail terms
The poor use trains to access the jobs in the rich areas they can’t afford to get to. The rich need the poors to work the jobs they don’t want because it doesn’t pay enough but still need done.
If you want to build a train in empty space I’m sure you could get that approved pretty quickly. Of course, it’d be useless. The biggest problem with trains is getting land for it since they are most useful where there’s a lot of people.
I hate these data centers and flock cameras as much as the next guy, but they aren’t really comparable. Flock cameras don’t even take up much space and they are put up on land the government already has. It’s like asking why it’s so easy to put stop lights.
Sorry, I’m Mr Buzzkill.
bro you have trains but only freight trains
The USA has no problem bulldozing housing to build highways.
Not sure how true that is. New highways aren’t that common and all the ones I know about took forever to actually get built.
Yeah, but only because that land belonged to blacks and cut prospering communities in half to drown them in traffic hell. You wouldn’t want a repeat of that.
Rip out the extra lanes of the damn roads and highways that induced demand, and we got all the space we need without destroying much in the way of existing buildings. A double track is only about as wide as one lane of our surface stroads.
One direction of high speed rail track would require at just under two freeway lanes worth of width (two directions need ~4 lanes).
And that’s before dealing with the additional freeway/rail safety separation, barriers, shoulders, drainage, etc.
While there are sections of highway that could support this amount of removal, if definitely not as easy as “swap road for track, done.”
I don’t see much of an issue since we already have 8 lane interstates connecting the vast majority of the cities in this country. The HSR could even connect with the light rail using existing bypasses. We have already emminent domained more space than we need, both inside and outside of the cities.
Easy? No. Easier than continuing to support a broken system of highways that hasn’t been revisited in policy since at least the 1970’s? Yes.
The double track I was referring to is the light rail that one would use in urban areas. HSR has no need to expand all the way into most city centers.
In the ideal situation where there are 8 lanes sustained throughout the entire proposed path, that still means removing at least 50% of the current inter city infrastructure. While adding more lanes is always a temporary fix, removing that substantial an amount is simply not feasible and the reason it hasn’t happened yet.
when you are at an 8 lane highway, you are already so far down the wrong path that the status quo hurts as much as ripping the whole thing out and providing alternatives would.
And yet it is possible and feasible in every other country, including ones like The Netherlands that followed us down our idiotic path, until the early 2000’s, and ripped out the roads and gave the cities back to all forms of transportation.
It isn’t possible because no one is willing to do it, other than some of the coastal cities on the west Coast, where it is slow, but works damn well.
This. American roads are widened constantly for no reason other than paycheck justification. They could rip out existing highways (which cause lots of traffic) and replace them with trainlines.
None of this is written in stone. Critical infrastructure should always be prioritized. We see how China did it. In the end it’s all about political will.
We all know that China prioritizes critical infrastructure like flocks of cameras and the associated data centres to closely monitor its population. Hence they are built quickly, whereas trains take way longer then a month to be set up.
Somehow ut still works in pretty much every other country
Yeah, this is cheap ragebait. Most of the stuff online is optimised for that outcome so I end up rolling my eyes most of the time.
