There's a saying : "Where there's a will, there's a way"

Big tech are using every trick in their book to circumvent regulations and to continue building data centers despite local community disapproval over noise, pollution and a myriad of other problems...

Of course, since data centers are (according to the DOJ), "a matter of national, economic, and energy security", doesn't matter even if they are ran by illegal gas turbines.

And they're not so small

Also, this consideration for others property.... man it would have been nice to have had it when the US was building highways through black communities...

Yeah, but if you look at the most egregious example of this, California high speed rail, at this point they've cleared most of the legal hurdles and have the land.

They still don't have an end date in sight though because of lack of investment. They get a slow trickle from California carbon tax but not much else. They'll occasionally get a grant from the federal government only to have it rescinded when Trump gets in office.

The slow trickle from the carbon tax is enough to complete the flat part in maybe 6 years, but the part where they'll have to bore long tunnels through mountains to get to LA or San Francisco is impossible without a large investment.

Meanwhile there's no shortage of investment going to data centers.

On the Flock cameras, pretty much agreed.

Data centers are a bit more interesting. Sure the land itself is "find a willing landowner or handful in a sea of any land that would be equally ok", but then you have supporting infrastructure. Perhaps not as large of a route to secure, and more flexibility to make pretty sharp turns and such, but still lots of room for people to get in the way of a critical dependency. So surely the datacenters are having issues getting power to their facilities in the face of so many people around their property not wanting to give up their land right? No solution for that.

Oh yeah, if they won't sell their property to facilitate it, the government will just take it over: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ripple/2026/07/16/when-can-a-power-company-take-your-land-for-a-data-center/

So yes, in both datacenter and train, people can make it very hard to get things done. Somehow they find a way for the datacenters...

China was capable of doing it. Oh, but they have central planning and blah blah blah. Yeah, let's do that then. Let's lay some track. If "freedom" means no functional transit but se still get the surveillance state. And "China bad no freedom" means you get a surveillance state but also get functional transit I'll take Chinas system please. If I'm gonna have cameras watching me wherever I go; I'd at least like to be able to actually go somewhere.

That’s definitely a contributing factor. I remember the train line near my city… it took longer to buy up all the land than to actually build it. It might seem the same all building a road, but there are significantly more constraints, and a road benefits everyone around it, while trains only benefit Oriole at the train station.

Corruption does speed up the build process. Create a secret rail line plan outlining the land that will need to be bought, they allow a select few of the wealthy to buy up all that land. Then announce the construction plan letting the new land owners sell their land to the state/government at huge mark up. No need for public debate, expensive legal process just good ol' corruption getting the job done.

Heck, the EU even named a train after them! /s

Way more profit in selling everyone a depreciating asset you make them completely dependent on so they can never go back

They make more money selling cars. Think of how many cars are needed now that everyone needs their own personal one vs trains where 1 can transport hundreds of people.

Because it is a complex business model. Well actually two. Freight railroads work by transporting a load of freight from one location to another one far away. Massive long trains can easily transport as much as a 100 trucks. So scale makes it worth it, but for a lot of cargo it is truck -> train -> truck, which means you need a certain distance to make it significantly shorter not to go by truck directly. So a freight railroad needs to build a long railroad to make it worth it and that is a huge initial investment.

For passengers you can see the model in Japan. Basically it is a real estate company improving its land value by offering a better rail connection.

Both require a lot of money.

Not really, no.

Although there is one example in the U.S: Brightline

A company in Texas tried, but the state government deliberately killed it.

adolf muskrat made a killing pretending to push trains.

I mean that's part of it....... but not the whole picture. States are more than willing to utilize eminent domain when some company wants to install a new 6 lane tolled expressway.