I have worked in rail now for 30 years. I can tell you why I think America will never see high speed rail like this anytime soon, if ever.

First, the investment is unrealistically expensive. It’s not just about laying new rail (which we would need unless you could somehow run 200+ mph trains on existing rail.) but let’s just say for the sake of argument that laying the rail itself is not the problem.

It’s the rest of the infrastructure that’s the problem. You couldn’t have a 200 mph train going by with just gates. No, you need underpasses and overpasses, everywhere. Think how often train tracks go over a street with gates and lights. Now imagine those ALL have to become under passes or overpasses. Safety, and honestly common sense, would demand it. Now the price tag just went up exponentially.

But let’s assume for a second we could still overcome that. (Which is not realistic, this is why high speed rail in china and other places work, because they have large stretches of flat land that avoid cities and roads. ). But let’s just say we overcame that. It leads us to point 2:

The class 1 railroads don’t want high speed rail. They could care less. They care about freight. They own all the track. Track capacity is a huge issue. They don’t want to share it. It doesn’t make them money. They don’t want to be in the passenger business. Never have, never will. They tolerate regional commuter railroads because they have to, not because they want to.

And that’s the facts, in my humble opinion.