I did sort of contradict myself there and say never and multi-decade plan. Problems the US has: * Lack of spoke and hub railways. * Cars. * Cost-per-mile, w

I did sort of contradict myself there and say never and multi-decade plan. Problems the US has: * Lack of spoke and hub railways. * Cars. * Cost-per-mile, which if I understand correctly is a political and a union-thing. * And just politics by itself. It's not dissimilar in the UK, but somehow we muddle through it. I don't believe that "cheap" maglev will ever help the US, it's been around for decades, and the longest highspeed line built by the Chinese is 19 miles at a cost of "only" $1.3 bn (I'll leave it up to the reader about how realistic that construction cost would be in the West). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#China,_2000-present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#China,_2000-present The US will still have the same problem huge construction costs, political lobbying from the airlines, no hub and spoke railways, a vast airport style set of car parking around any terminals that are built. The West now suffers from pointless adversarial politics where the opposition votes the opposite to the government simply "because", and for no rational reason other than "it's the other party". Even once you get past that hurdle, it's how "cheap" is the cheapest bidder. Labour/labor laws and so on. I would genuinely love to see the US lead the world with high speed rail, but I just can't see it.