I'm fascinated by the argument here. It's a failure because it loses money and connects lower-traffic cities. Can you see past the tip of your nose there? Wh

I'm fascinated by the argument here. It's a failure because it loses money and connects lower-traffic cities. Can you see past the tip of your nose there? When traffic is low is the perfect time to build capacity. Everything is cheaper and easier to do in a bare field rather than trying to carve an opening in the middle of an already-bustling metropolis, and you end up with fewer design compromises as a result. There's also a huge "build it and they will come" angle here. Replacing a 10-hour conventional rail journey with a 3-hour HSR one makes these cities viable for new audiences-- the remote-worker occasional commuter, the shift worker who might spend several days at the office and then return home on weekends. It also makes sense when dovetailed with a government that has more economic planning controls than most Western nations-- they can target development efforts in these cities to create the demand base after the rails are built.