Same as Japan, where high-speed rail is very successful.
Is it?
Have you been on one?
Have you compared it to the wonderful Japanese highways???
Do you know anything about the economic structure of either?
No?
Why don’t you, before you say to compare ...?
Have you compared it to the wonderful Japanese highways???
Do you know anything about the economic structure of either?
I can answer "yes" to these.
Japan does have very nice highways; they spend a lot of money on making well-built highways — a necessity in a country with as many earthquakes as Japan does.
It also has an excellent high-speed rail system.
The roadways and their associated taxes do pay for themselves. In fact, the excess money generated from the roadways pays for other parts of the budget.
Railways are far more complex. In and of themselves, they don't pay for themselves, but they put infrastructure in for vast numbers of businesses that also pay taxes. I think that's the most compelling fiscal reason for having such a fine rail system as Japan does.
However, Japan is densely populated, so densely populated that having a car in Tokyo is a far more greater problem than it is in the vast majority of the U.S. I am not sure that without that tremendous density that even the infrastructure argument can be made.
Have you been on one?Yes, I've ridden on the Japanese Bullet Train.
Have you compared it to the wonderful Japanese highways???
Do you know anything about the economic structure of either?
Japanese passenger rail was privatised back in the early '90s.
Of course much of there success is due to government investment in state-of-the-art technology during the previous decades.
In contrast, Amtrak inherited antiquated crap cast aside by the freight railroads.
We still have more to upgrade before Amtrak can operate profitably like the Japanese.