The slow-motion trainwreck that anyone paying attention saw coming.
We rode it last year from Miami to Orlando. It was fine, but hardly high speed. Driving through Vegas yesterday on our way back home from Park City, we saw no signs of construction of the planned HSR from there to Victorville, let alone Rancho Cucamunga. They clearly don’t have the money.
And yes, this:
High-speed rail is catnip to politicians. Except it doesn’t work in America. Not only do we drive, but we take airplanes. As I said in March, much better to build more lanes on an expressway.
I’ve been saying for years that widening I-5 between the Grapevine and i-680 (as Pat Brown always intended) would be a vastly better investment for ground transportation between LA and SF than rail. The two new lanes could be charging lanes for fast electric FSD cars.
[Update a few minutes later]
California’s HSR boondoggle meets another justifiable roadblock.
I feel the appeal of the open road but I do not like actual existing interstate highways. To judge by the proliferation of screens in cars, neither do most Americans.
Regional rail and air travel in the USA are a has been or never were. “Since 2000, some 800 regional or secondary air routes in America have closed or been downgraded*.” People drive because they must until, as Rand suggested, FSD becomes normal.
*https://airsideint.com/issue-article/can-us-regional-aviation-be-reset/