It's actually worse than that: it's not that the US doesn't know how to learn (from others), it's the US increasingly takes pride in its own ignorance. I rememb

It's actually worse than that: it's not that the US doesn't know how to learn (from others), it's the US increasingly takes pride in its own ignorance. I remember a friend years ago telling about the rise of anti-intellectualism in the US. I said he was wrong. Boy was I way off. Stephen Colbert in 2005 was disturbingly prescient with this [1]. As for anything regarding public transit (intercity or intracity) in the US, sadly I think it's pretty much a lost cause. People just don't want it. They want their 1-2 acre lots within a city (which I still find crazy) and their cars. The US is more than twice the land area of the EU. The EU has people concentrated in fewer cities (just look at how many airports and flights there are between the two). Barring some historical exceptions in the Northeast, American cities are generally much less dense. All these factors work against public transit. It's not impossible but it's harder. As for Amtrak... it's pretty much a victim of a fairly disastrous nationalization. Amtrak shares the lines with freight that can often delay it. Just having the track and the rights-of-way doesn't mean it's easy or cheap to upgrade or replace it for high-speed rail. There's lots of opposition to this for of public infrastructure spending. And so on. [1]: https://www.cc.com/video/63ite2/the-colbert-report-the-word-truthiness https://www.cc.com/video/63ite2/the-colbert-report-the-word-...