no it's not at all obvious and your take is way off the mark. the first TGV line opened in 1981... france had quite a bit of infrastructure then, it wasn't som

no it's not at all obvious and your take is way off the mark. the first TGV line opened in 1981... france had quite a bit of infrastructure then, it wasn't some freshly cratered hellhole. > Major transportation revolution that enables mass transit without infrastructure, think flying cars no, please god no. steel on steel is a modern, mature and extremely effective technology. the only serious attempt to "innovate" in recent memory, the chuo shinkansen, an ongoing effort by the world's second most competent builder and operator of rail systems has been a massive shitshow. in addition to being far more expensive than conventional HSR, it has an order of magnitude less capacity. there's a word for this: gadgetbahn. just say no to gadgetbahns if steel on steel sounds too simple to you and isn't scratching some techy itch for technological complexity it's because you're not looking deep enough. there's an entire journal devoted to studying the dynamics of the wheel-rail system [1] [1] http://interfacejournal.com/ http://interfacejournal.com/