Biden admin announces 2.8 billion for passenger rail including high speed

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

The problem is government, NIMBYs and all the environmental regulations make it hard to actually build. On the other hand, Brightline West (LA to Las Vegas) is mostly across the desert where there are no landowners to block the project, meaning that it already has the land, so it should start construction soon.

The main idea is that once the first line is built and people get to experience it, building the rest should be easy because there is far more political demand (giving NIMBYs less power, and allowing environmental regulations/funding to be expediated).

That said, construction will likely finish under Trump's watch, so Trump will take the credit for it.

Despite chugging along, California's high speed rail seems to finally be making progress. Construction package 4 is finished, and the latest infusion of money should allow it to at least finish Fresno to Bakersfield. Hopefully, the demand to build the rest of the line should skyrocket once the initial segment is complete. One proposal is to hire Palestines to build the tunnels at $2.50 per hour to make the costs reasonable; not only does it get them out of a warzone, but it also reduces the tunnel cost massively (probably from $20 billion+ to less than $2 billion).

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

China built a national high-speed rail system for less than how much our bipartisan infrastructure bill cost. This means that we could have all lines connecting basically any pair of cities <500 miles apart if we were as efficient as China, for less than $1.2 trillion. This includes earthquake zones and mountains in central China (ie Kunming to Shanghai 190 mph is mostly tunneled and actually was cheaper than most of the other lines).

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

China built a national high-speed rail system for less than how much our bipartisan infrastructure bill cost. This means that we could have all lines connecting basically any pair of cities <500 miles apart if we were as efficient as China, for less than $1.2 trillion. This includes earthquake zones and mountains in central China (ie Kunming to Shanghai 190 mph is mostly tunneled and actually was cheaper than most of the other lines).

This entails a Chinese approach to private property, which I have no interest in. Surely we can cut costs without adopting quasi-communist despotism.

I would just pay everyone 10x what their land is worth in rural areas (surely this will get almost everyone to move), since their land isn't worth that much anyway (as compared to the suburbs/urban areas), and try to tunnel under the suburbs or build the rest adjacent to highways. In the worst case, I would use existing lines (though the problem is that Amtrak doesn't own them, freight companies do).

I would also use the Chinese approach to cheap labor and environment: hire people from foreign countries where our minimum wage is a good wage for them, and give them temporary visas until the construction is complete. Cut the environmental review process from several years to 6 months at most.