this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2025
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To be fair, China's high speed rail network has also grown so quickly because there are no public consultations or similar. They just build it, the people be damned. If you don't have a democracy, that works. But I would rather live in a democracy than an authoritarian state (at the same time, I'm glad I'm not living in the crumbling democracy that is the US).
Of course, what Elon is saying is total BS, and the US could have started much earlier - or, that is, improved the north east corridor and used that experience to bring more high speed rail to the US much earlier. But anyway...
Next four largest high speed rail networks are in Spain, Japan, France, and Germany... which might not be perfect democracies, but are certainly far from the worst.
Democracy isn't the problem, and you certainly don't need to be a dictatorship to get things done.
The US has a population density of 37 people per square kilometer, the EU is 106, which is three times higher. China is 147 people per square kilometer.
By distance, those European rail networks are also tiny compared to what's needed in the US.
A rail line from Seattle-Portland-San Francisco-Los Angeles alone would be longer than the entire highspeed rail system in Germany, and only connect 21 million people across those metro areas, half of which are in LA.
The German network covers around 60 million people in the Metro areas it covers.
LA to New York by rail is the same distance as the entirety of Spain's rail system, and would have an even shittier coverage ratio. Not to mention even a direct trip would still take 14-16 HOURS, where a flight takes 6ish + a couple at the airport waiting for less than $100 return on a budget airline. Why the fuck would anyone take the train? Even if the train was free, it wouldn't be worth it for anyone conducting business between those two places.
When distances get large, high-speed rail gets crushed by airplanes. The infrastructure for high speed rail is just too fucking expensive unless you're moving absolutely massive numbers of people around.