To put this into perspective, China’s high-speed rail project in Indonesia connecting Jakarta and Bandung (a distance of 143 km) at a speed of 350 km/h was completed in just four months at total cost of $7.3 billion.
This line has seen an impressive number of passengers, with approximately 2 million people utilizing the service.
The first time you do something, you also need to learn how to do it, set up production lines, make mistakes, learn from them, and build up expertise. The US is only starting to build high-speed rail, while China has the biggest high-speed rail network in the world. I would call it a step in the right track (hehe), although one that should have been taken years ago.
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Why is it expensive?
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So the issue seems to be private ownership of land, not the locale
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There is a first time learning curve to climb and there is a project that good chance will never complete. This is really looking like the later than the former. Don’t forget how much money already sunk in. This was back in ‘22, project started in 2008.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/29/california-high-speed-rail-bullet-train
Meanwhile we have been “figuring it out” and Mexico, you know what the US considers nothing but Cancun, cartels, beans, and needs a wall has learned, funded, built and opened first service in Dec and almost fully running today and way bigger, about 5x in track length. Total project cost around 30bil and few years to build. MX is even manufacturing the trains in Mexico.
https://apnews.com/article/mexico-maya-train-tourist-rail-yucatan-81d827ff51589fe43ed608ffb309be4a
The only good success on how to do rail, even if not bullet speeds, in the US is Brightline. They have plans to expand even further but at least is doing something today vs another 100bil and 1-2 decades.
By all metrics the CA project is a money pit.
This is horrible. They are building a line connecting some small towns and plan to use it as a proof of concept? That could work as an engineering proof of concept, but without a guaranteed budget people are going to see it as a commercial failure and write it off.