How do they calculate whether a given route can be supported? Japan's Shinkansen goes thorough urban areas too. If the will is sufficient, that should not be a stopper.

As for density, I don't think anyone is suggesting they just build high speed lines randomly across the States.

I think that's not quite right. No one is saying that high speed rail should be applied in a blanket fashion across the US. Certain corridors can work. The Northeast corridor has the population as does the Bay Area to Greater LA route. Possibly some other routes can also work.

There is wider economic benefits than the immediate cost (or profit to the contractors). Shorten travel time can generate positive externalities. The World Bank has a made a report on the postive impact high speed rail has made on China: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/pre...nomic-benefits

The same could conceivably apply to portions of the US with a high speed rail.

Bunk. There are literally dozens of city pairs or sequences in the US where HSR is viable. DFW-AUS-SAT-HOU, ORD-STL-MCI, DTW-ORD-IND, ORD-MKE, BOS-BTV-YUL, MIA-FLL-MCO, PHL-PIT-CMH-CLE, LAS-LAX, SAN-LAX-SFO-SMF, PDX-SEA-YVR are some of the most obvious outside the NEC. Many of theses routes already have successful corridor services that can gradually be improved to become higher speed services. Not true HSR, but 110mph or better services that easily beat driving and compete pretty well with flying up to 500 mile distances.

The Shinkansen has my vote for best in the world. TGV and AVE not far behind. Have ridden plenty of trains in China, but not the high speed lines yet.

As for the Northeast Corridor, there really isn't enough NEED for true high speed rail. The trains already run fast enough, they carry heavy loads, and the stations are too close to really benefit from any greater speed. Right now they are dealing with the bottle necks - the bridges in New York, and the congestion in Southern Connecticut and New York. The next thing they need to work on is station access - the stations may be convenient for those in the city itself, but is terribly inconvenient for suburban dwellers because getting to the stations is so difficult. Once they fix that, THEN they will need to build a new route, because there just isn't more capacity with what they have now.

I have to disagree. There's this underlying rationale in America of making excuses that "it's not dense enough" and only to come back years later saying "ok we now have the density, but urban land space is too expensive to build now."

All you have to do is look at CA. In 1980s there was a proposal to build HSR here back then. it was scrapped because of the "the distances are too great, population density is too thin" remark.

Flash forward to 2013, CA is now more populous as ever with airports full to capacity, traffic jams being a total mess, with nary a solution to increasing population density. Now urban land prices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego are extremely high that the real estate crash from the rest of the nation doesn't affect us - it's a red hot market here with cash buyers.

Now we have the urban density to warrant HSR in CA between SF-LA-SD. We even have the federal grants to start building it. We even got additional federal grants from the ones that FL and WI rejected. Unfortunately no one wants to sell their land for a dedicated HSR line because urban land prices is scarce and high. So that adds up to additional time and money lost to build this, if ever.

If you want to build HSR, it has to be built when there is land available for cheap which is before higher density population centers take shape. You need to analyze "ok which cities has the most potential to becoming a great, which city corridors would do well with a HSR project today?" That's the way to plan out things, not wait until density is there that now urban land prices become the problem.


As for Japan, we'll they got a fresh re-start: we bombed their cities down to ashes during WW2 - they got to rebuild their cities around mass transit. They didn't have to worry about NIMBYs or frivolous "won't someone pleeeease think of the children" type BS lawsuits about HSR going through their homes or cities. Majority of Japanese right after WW2 were too poor to afford cars and yet they needed a way to get to work to rebuild their country. NIMBYism and anti-high density development took a back seat to rebuild their nation and the people worked together with their government to plan out their cities with mass transit. And it worked great for them under the Japanese system of government lead projects - in less than 20 years after the end of WW2 where everything was burnt to ashes, Japan was able to rebuild itself to become an economic superpower where Tokyo successfully did the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and built the world's first bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka.

As for China, they are an authoritarian communist country. They want a HSR, they draw a line through a map and bulldoze anything in its path. Oh there are homes and businesses there? Sucks to be them, they have no rights to question government projects. Oh there was a four year baby inside the home? Too bad. Oh there's a mountain in the way? Dynamite it. Tree-huggers? Kill 'em. Toxic industrial waste? Meh, bury them. How do you think China is able to build HSR in a matter of years? Because in China, the government has absolute power and the citizens don't.

The US on the other hand is neither Japan or China, you are right. But it's not land size or population density. It's Japan got a fresh re-start from WW2 - they got a hard reset to do urban planning. It's China being under an authoritarian regime where the citizen has no right to question government projects. That's the biggest difference.

"The [US] population density is too thin, and the distances are too great. America is not Japan."


That may hold true for Wyoming or Montana, but 35 million people
or so live along the I-95 corridor. I think a triangle from Miami to Chicago
to New York is practical. Even Spain and Turkey have high speed rail these days; this is getting embarrassing.

Who knows what is going on behind the scene ? Which lobby is powerful, FOR or AGAINST ? Who stands to gain or lose ?

@kebosabi
Whom do you mean with "we"? FT is largely an international forum.
Maybe you should not forget that China has move forward quite a bit in the last decade.
Just look at the protests against the Beijing - Shenyang High-Speed Rail and Maglev extension projects. City Governments will listen to its citizens.
Its not black and white as portrayed by Fox News, Sen. Cruz and the Heritage Foundation?
Moreover, why are most High-Speed lines built on more expensive pylons. Right, so that the farmers could still keep their land.

The article about the four-year old kid that was killed by a bulldozer in the name of progress is dated 2013/08/29. That was less than three months ago.

Furthermore, let's not forget how China handled the Wenzhou incident two years ago. Covering up the HSR train collision like it never happened and trying to bury the damage along with dead in a ditch?

Sorry, China still has a long way to go.


You'd be surprised how NIMBYs in CA do not want aerial pylons because "it divides up the neighborhood."

If you want to see the nasty effects of Baby Boomer NIMBYism ruining American transit infrastructure projects, all you need to do is take a close watch at what is happening to the CAHSR project.

There is the money. We even have the extra money that FL and WI rejected.

Majority of CAnians are for the idea.

Yet, it gets stalled because of NIMBYism at its finest (worst).


Heck there's even an article on The Fresno Bee today stating that it's costing taxpayers $600 million in consulting costs to get through all the litigation, environmental, and engineering plans before even a single shovel is put to ground.

http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/11/19/...ant-costs.html

And remember, this is what used to be the country that made the transcontinental railroad in 4 years back in the 19th century.

That's during pre-NIMBY era.

And that is the strategy. If you lack the votes to block a project, drive up the costs and time frame to the point the project fails. it doesn't matter how much it costs everyone in the end, because you can always blame the cost on the other side. And even if you loose this battle, if you have driven the costs up high enough, you can use it as a example of why future projects are going to be too expensive (see Las Vegas Monorail)

To get us back on topic a bit...

I've been on the French TGV, German ICE, Japanese Shinkansen (just returned from a three week trip in Japan, all by train), Italian Frecciarossa, Eurostar and the Austrian RailJet.

I think the RailJet is definitely my favorite. Not as fast as the others but the scenery between Zurich and Innsbruck just can't be beat. Even more fun if you stop off at the Aqua Dome on the way.

Fat Tony from The Simpsons: "Actually, you can really keep costs down when you don't pay for materials, or labor, or permits or... land."

That holds very true on why the US were able to build the transcontinental railroad so quickly back then but has a hard time doing anything today.

Materials? Meh, chop the trees in the forest! Environmentalists? We don't need no environmentalists!

Labor? Oh we have the Chinese and the Irish to do the job for us, and they'll do it no matter how dangerous it is. And the best part, they do it for dirt cheap, and if they die, they can be easily replaced!

Permits or land? Just rob and steal the land from the Native Americans! Yeehaw!

Try to do that today will be an impossible feat to do.

And which goes back to my argument that it's not the money nor politics, it's the NIMBYism that ultimately kills HSR plans in the US.

That reminds me, Swiss rails offers some of the best scenic rail tours anywhere in the world. The Bernina and Glacier Express I'm told offer some stunning alpine scenery.

Great that you have experience with so many train varieties.

RailJet is ok but it feels more like a regular train and is perhaps comparable to the Pendolino train in Czech Republic.

Out of ICE and TGV I would prefer TGV (EuroStar actually) because it feels like a proper super-train! ICE has a better design though.