That's a strange article. The TGV Inoui is not a "new high-speed train", it is an SNCF brand (think "premium TGV") that has been operating for nearly a decade now, using standard TGV rolling stock. SNCF are simply buying new trains for that brand, and the interior design doesn't even look that different from other new high-speed trains in other parts of the world.
The best rail being built in the US is in Florida, the brightline:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline
it's a tad expensive for a lot of people, and doesn't go as fast as it could because it uses existing lines but.. it's pretty good. it came about during the 08' recession, florida (gov Rick Scott) cancelled what was going to be a statewide rail line to save money. i remember nearly all the people i mentioned it too wished it had been kept. whoever the man/team/group that eventually founded brightline they fought an uphill battle but it helped most seniors in the state at the time could remember the US with trains and it had broad public interest, along with the backing of Disney.
it's still really hard to use only the train in FL. florida is very spaced out and a misery of heat during the summer. you can avoid the heat if you go from inside>car>inside, but trains lend themselves to walking.
having optionality is nice and i take it at least once month for the novelty and invite friends on to hopefully build awareness.
the us can build great things. we just need more builders to take their eyes off software and go back to public projects.
> TGV stands for train à grande vitesse, or “train of great speed.”
This is one of my pet peeves. Train à grande vitesse means high-speed train in English. There's no need to provide a mechanical word by word translation. It's like people saying al dente means "to the tooth" which is meaningless in English. Being al dente means something has bite. This kind of thing should only be a problem if the target language has no translation.
I wish we had /rail/, period, to many destinations. Utah's frontrunner doesn't go far enough north or south, which means I have to own a car :/
A French team offered to build a high speed line in California based on their technology. After several years they gave up and built one in North Africa instead, since the government there was so much more functional.
Please read Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson to understand why there is no TGV in California. Long story short : Well intended regulations and excessive outsourcing to the private sector made the costs prohibitive.
Americans are asking why they can’t have European trains, meanwhile Japan and China are ROFLing.
New high-speed train? There is nothing like even France's old high-speed trains in the US
You're in the richest country in the history of earth. You can have anything you want. If you really want it.
When a 300mph Japanese maglev passes close by it looks like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gp4DcRsELc
Imagine living in the SF Bay Area and seeing a BART train move like that? Just unreal.
But the US is huge. So is China, and they have fantastic trains.
The freedom to choose between public transportation and your own vehicle is immense. I don’t like driving, maintaining a car, or constantly paying for gas and insurance, and I’m fine with the inconvenience. At least in Europe, I have the option to give up a car and opt for public transportation.
An explanation I once read, and I think makes total sense, is WWII. Europe was heavily destroyed after WWII with no exception to railway tracks. They needed to be rebuild. They were, but with a much better technology than what was there in the 1800s. This allowed faster trains, better technology overall to be "deployed" and ultimately better initial adpotion which started a positive feedback loop. Meanwhile railway tracks were never bombed and never needed to be rebuilt like they were in Europe, so the infrastructure didn't allow for the technological improvements and the positive feedback look never started.
What they forgot to mention in the article (or I missed) is that train is extremly expensive and has gotten more expensive over the years. I cannot do it right now but I'd bet the price per km is much higher that what it is for a plain ride or even a car ride (if the car is full, meaning 4 train tickets vs card ride) which very frustrating when the consensus is "we need to take the train more often, driving is not good" while salaries stagnate and inflation is having the time of its life.
You can ask the Wallstreet Apes for a detailed explanation, but it's a combination of corrupted government real estate acquisition, development, a pinch of nepotism to change ownership, and a lot of money laundering.
Don't despair:
- many parts of most EU countries still don't have access to high speed trains, and they complain too (with that said, some of them are French, so _of course_ they would complain)
- the parts that are on the way to have high speed train are complaining because of the infrastructure work involved (everybody wants the train station ; no one wants the trails)
- that parts that have high speed train will complain about delays, strikes, the lack of electrical plugs, the WiFi quality, etc...
- at least in France, it's still very often cheaper to flight than ride a high speed train (which does not make any sense to most people.)
The answer is in the American political system. First, USA is not a country, it is a union of states that are quite independent and at the dawn of the USA central government was avoiding enforcement of too much regulation, as states were very different - economically, socially, demographically, religiously, so it would be very risky to do something that might enrage one or several states.
Example. USA decided to change tariffs policy to help development of local industry at the times when USA didn't have its own, had to steal inventions from UK (see Slater the Traitor story). Those tariffs helped industrialization of the Northern states, but which hurt states that lived from agriculture production driven by almost free workforce and wanted as much free trade as possible to sell their products abroad. And, as we know, this caused a really bad war. BTW: the tale "to tariff or not to tariff" happens again and again in USA history, now we have another turn.
So there is historical reluctance to say for central government "ok, we will build a fast rail from Boston to Oregon, everyone on the way has to pay for it".
Secondly, USA is really, really decentralized on the counties level, this is again, historical thing. When American settlers where going West they couldn't count on central government to help them, so they knew that anything they spent, they have to earn, as a result, till today, there is no so much thinking about a "bigger picture", but mostly on the stuff which is just here. County X does not see much reason to pay for fast railway, or even letting it go through it, given the trains would not stop in that county, instead they will "have nasty, loud piece of steel" going through their land.
Thirdly, USA is big. Really big, it is way bigger and sparsely populated than France, so the viability of the railway is questionable. On shorter distances cars do their job, on longer flying makes more sense, as it does not require expensive infrastructure on the deserted and mostly empty territories.
There are areas in the USA that are more densely populated, mostly the East coast, so I can see fast rail from NY to Florida, but I don't see something like this in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming.
But how building this NY-Florida railway should be financed? Central budget? This would enrage other states, as for them this does not matter. Will NY, N/S Carolina, Virginia and Florida team up to do an investment? Is there any organizational structure in the USA that would provide a frame for such cooperation?
This is far from simple. People often say, "but this is working so great in Switzerland, Finland, France or Norway or even in China!" without looking on the specific political, economical, etc. aspects, that are incomparable to the USA.
OK I'll answer.
The US is owned by the fossil fuel industry. Just look at Trump's recent announcement about "clean coal". Trump is too stupid to come up with an original thought, someone told him that phrase and he mimics it now.
Apparently, part of the answer is "because of Elon Musk", after it became clear that the whole hyperloop fuss was a conspiracy to funnel money out of the ongoing Californian fast rail projects, which he was perceiving as a threat to his nascent EV ventures.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/elon-m...
Trains are nice on vacations since I don't care about the price and it's a novel experience. It doesn't make sense to do in America since it's more expensive than having people drive and it limits people's freedom to stations instead of where they need to get to.
Because you can’t have America and France at the same time!
You can’t have 300k salaries (you gotta cut it by 90% for taxes), small government, small regulations, limits on other public services that follow suit, low energy prices …
You can’t cherry pick. If you want fast trains from France, you need to become France.
At the end, public transport will be congested, captured by homeless, dirty, … There is no train from any A to any Z, you have take it from A, change to B, C, to Z. You will burn out in public transport, and drive a car. Not to mention US is a vast sparsely populated country, compared to EU that may have no choice but to rely on a mix of public and private transport.
I live in Europe and I also ask "why can't we have that".
High speed rail >240km/h is still very uncommon[0], especially cross border (tho notable exceptions exist, e.g. Paris-Milan with both TGV and Frecciarossa just reopened).
There are EU plans for a wider network but it's progressing very slowly.
The presence of fast trains between two cities, on the scale of <600km, is transformative, as it becomes more convenient to take a train than to fly, while also having less negative externalities.
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe