HSR unsuitable for US

I have always had serious doubts about the commercial viability of HSR in the US.

I understand Acela is an exception for bullet trains. It takes 3 hours and 50 minutes to travel 372 km from Boston to NYC (98 KPH on average), but it illustrates the challenge of building HSR in the US.



In the PRC, everything effectively belongs to the CCP, so the government can use the best route and erase any residential or business properties at will (they do need to make some payments). In the US, acquiring land for HSR can be a very lengthy and expensive process. 

The Acela route between Boston and DC is probably the most densely populated area in the US. A true Boston-DC HSR can get a healthy ridership but is very expensive to build. 

The California HSR's current estimated cost is $128B/1280 km ($100M/km vs $20M/km in the PRC).

You could have much lower costs in states such as Wyoming or New Mexico, but you would have very limited ridership. 

Acela currently uses old rails with frequent turns and this is why it is slower than a car on average. 



The HSR in the PRC loses over ￥100B($14B) with a total debt of over ￥6T ($800B). One may argue this is justified. 

The US is quite different in almost every sense. Its demand for HSR is far lower. Driving, which offers all kinds of freedom, is almost like a religion for many Americans. HSR needs to go with good public transportation to make it effective. US public transportation is behind the PRC and Europe mainly by choice.

Air transportation is well-developed in the US. The Boston-NYC round trip airfare is $150 +/- $70. The Acela round-trip ticket costs about $200. 

I travel fairly frequently for both business and pleasure. Even if HSR were highly available, I would use it only once or twice a year. That is probably the case for most Americans. The American mindset of individualism and obsession with selections and choices are not the best fit for mass transportation on rigid schedules.

Autonomous vehicles will reduce the need for HSR. It is often the waste of time, not the travel time per se that matters. Fully autonomous vehicles are like mobile offices or bedrooms, hence reducing the waste of time in traveling by 90+%. If I have one, this will be how I have my day trip to NYC which I usually make by flying or Acela:

Get up at my regular time between 4:00 and 4:30, hop into the car, start to work on my laptop, have breakfast while the car self-drives to New Haven, and then take Metro-North Express to reach Manhattan by 9:00. 

On my return, take Metro North back to New Haven in the late afternoon, hop into the car and have a nap, then browse Bluesky on a laptop while the car self-drives home. This is much better than a bullet train that has a fixed schedule and needs driving to and from it, and good luck with parking.

Ten or twenty years down the road, cost-effective drones flying at 200 - 300KPH will certainly be better than bullet trains. 

I do not believe the US should waste money on HSR.

The US police's fear of liability is absurd. I wonder how much this is related to George Floyd. 

A jerk pretended to be non-responsive and Amtrak police surrounded him for an hour before the EMS came to remove him forcefully. Over 300 Acela passengers wasted an hour at night with frustration. Most of us had Boston as the final destination and we arrived in Boston at midnight.



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