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it won't work well in america because of he culture. people like to ride in cars.
also, high speed rail doesn't seem to make much sense in america as it's not very dense in population and there is a lot of space.
It could work , ppl are starting to dump cars for Transit.....HSR works best in the Northeast , Midwest , Northwest and Cali....it would fail in the South and Texas.
That leg, expected to be completed by the end of this year, will eventually tie in to Chicago. Officials said it will cut the travel time between St. Louis and Chicago by 90 minutes, to less than four hours, with trains traveling at 110 mph — the Federal Railroad Administration's qualifying threshold for high-speed rail.
Note, speed is STILL the same in September.. Did you expect a big technological change from Jan to September of this year?
The projects wre awarded in January but they havent yet begun construction. There was a big deal made about a month ago when they announced the trains would be build here in the USA, (even though its a foreign owned corporation).. Somewhere around here there is a forum on it..
Shanghai and Beijing are huge cities and there will be much demand for this. I would say there are only 3 routes in the US that would be practical for ultra-fast (hopefully maglev) rail.
1. NYC-Washington DC. Forget Baltimore. IMO there is only enough demand for this route with perhaps a stop in Philly.
2. NYC-Chicago. The distance is 700+ miles which is close to the 600+ miles separating Shanghai and Beijing. This could be a very busy route. A train going 250 MPH could get there in around 3 hours. This would be a wonderful alternative to getting groped by the TSA and when you factor in all the time spent in airports and the fact that they are never close to your actual destination, I believe this would be a major competitor for the airlines.
3. LA-SF. Same deal.
Massive government investment in the infrastructure could be just the thing to get out of our economic malaise. This would also be a safer bet than WW3.
Not as vulnerable as someone standing at the end of a runway just outside the fence with a home-made rocket that'll take down any passenger plane.
Can you imagine the cost to defend against that?
$Trillions annually.
You wouldn't even need a rocket for a train. There would be thousands of miles of track to guard and all some Jihadi would have to do would be to put a car or boulder on the tracks and watch what happens when a large object traveling 200 mph derails.
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