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Why the United States Still Has No High-Speed Trains

September 1, 2025 By Analysis.org

The United States lacks high-speed trains for a mix of political, economic, geographic, and cultural reasons that together make such projects unusually difficult compared to countries like France, Japan, or China. At the core is the country’s historic preference for cars and airplanes, which shaped infrastructure and public expectations over a century. After World War II, massive investments went into the Interstate Highway System and commercial aviation, while passenger rail was left to decline. By the time high-speed rail began transforming Europe and Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. had already locked itself into a car-and-plane dominated transport ecosystem.

Another barrier has been the American approach to land use and geography. The U.S. is sprawling, with many metropolitan areas separated by hundreds of miles of open space. High-speed rail thrives in dense corridors with multiple large cities relatively close together, like Tokyo–Osaka or Paris–Lyon. In the U.S., only a handful of corridors, such as the Northeast (Boston–New York–Washington) or California (San Francisco–Los Angeles), have the right density and demand. Even there, land acquisition is extremely difficult. Unlike China, where the state can rapidly claim land, or France, where expropriation laws are streamlined, U.S. projects face years of lawsuits, environmental reviews, and local opposition. Costs escalate enormously before construction even begins.

Funding and political will are other crucial obstacles. High-speed rail requires tens of billions of dollars in upfront investment and a decades-long commitment. American politics often favors short-term results, and transportation funding is fragmented between federal, state, and local levels. Projects like California’s high-speed rail have been plagued by cost overruns, delays, and shifting political winds, which reinforce skepticism that such projects can ever succeed. By contrast, Europe and Asia built strong national rail operators with state backing and long-term industrial strategies, allowing them to build integrated high-speed networks.

Finally, cultural expectations play a role. Americans often see trains as outdated compared to driving or flying, and ticket pricing faces stiff competition from budget airlines, which offer fast and cheap coast-to-coast travel. High-speed rail would need to convince millions of people that it is not just environmentally superior but also more convenient and cost-effective than existing modes. Until those perceptions shift, large-scale investment is politically risky.

So the absence of high-speed trains in the U.S. is not about technology—the country has the engineering capacity—but about the structural and cultural environment. Building them would require a decisive shift in land use policy, infrastructure priorities, and national investment strategy, none of which has happened so far.

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