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I'd rather live in a high-speed-rail dependent sprawl than a car dependent sprawl. At least high speed rail doesn't have the problem of being stuck in traffic forever.
Maybe look at Germany, which has a fairly dense high speed rain network that connects most of their major cities. Like some people mentioned, the cost of taking a 1+ hour high speed rail trip to commute to a "big business city" from a smaller city along the high speed rail line, might wipe out any "cost of living" savings by living outside the big business city.
Let's say someone lives in Leipzig but works in Berlin (or vice versa). If you buy a "50 trip" Deutsche Bahn rail card for frequent travelers, you can save about half off the normal price, but it's still not "cheap". The ICE high speed train takes about 75 minutes and costs about 21 Euro (about $28 usd) EACH WAY! If our long distance commuter works about 19 days per month, that's about $1000 per month.
The economics of such an expensive commute don't make sense - I can't imagine why anyone would do it for a long term. It would be great for somebody to temporarily have the option if they switched jobs from one city to the next, but it requires the home to be close to the station on one end, and the job to be close to the station on the other end. In Germany, high speed rail has not created a mass amount of long haul high speed rail commuters, but it has made it very easy to make "same day round trips" from one city to another for business, tourism, or visiting family and friends.
Other countries might have a different story, such as Japan or Korea due to larger differences in cost of living in the central areas of the big urban areas compared to outlying cities.
the biggest reason is i would love a lightrail or rail system from the home area to the downtown not likeing to trying to drive downtown area for work and have to deal with finding a parking space or deal with local traffic at the time comeing into the city and then leaveing the and dealing with the evening traffic dureing the work week ..
The most obvious downfall to a high speed rail is how much money it will cost the government to build and subsidize after it is built.
Just like the interstate system that made the USA the world's economic powerhouse? It kills me how we're just sitting back and doing nothing while China builds the world's largest, fastest transportation system. Just like the US did 60 years ago. Now ours is going to be obsolete. If there was ever an indication that American power is waning it's that...
Just like the interstate system that made the USA the world's economic powerhouse? It kills me how we're just sitting back and doing nothing while China builds the world's largest, fastest transportation system. Just like the US did 60 years ago. Now ours is going to be obsolete. If there was ever an indication that American power is waning it's that...
We became the world's economic powerhouse because all the world's other economic powerhouses were pretty much bombed flat in the years 1939-1945. We had a national rail network that was the envy of the world (and in fact helped us win the war) and could have expanded that network just as easily, built public transit instead of public highways.
China built high-speed rail while we built highways, and now our highways are becoming obsolete--it's time to follow the example of the other economic powerhouses of the world, who built some highways too, but also built high-speed rail and public transit systems, to a much greater extent than the United States. And you're right, if we don't do exactly that, we will be left behind with our antiquated freeways.
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