this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Property acquisition costs and legal fees are immensely more expensive in the US. Have to obtain those thousands of miles of land for rail development from somebody.
There are ways. Maybe bring our number of aircraft carriers down to only 3x the rest of the world combined instead of 5x, just as an example.
I did the math on what a single coast to coast least possible distance link from D.C. to San Francisco would cost and it came out to 100 Billion dollars. It would connect no cities other than SF and DC unless they happen to fall directly on the rail line.
US Aircraft carriers cost around 10 Billion each (I'm averaging a bit here) and we only have 11 so we'd have to get rid of ALL of them to pay for a single coast to coast high speed rail link. Trying to connect "Every City in North America" would require cutting the entire military budget in half and spending it all on rail construction for the next 50 to 100 years.
The US is fucking HUGE and has a lot of cities.
You're only counting the build cost though, they cost anywhere from $1-2 billion a year to operate depending on which article you read. Considering an aircraft carrier's service life is usually around 40 years, that's quite a savings just from removing a single carrier group from the fleet. That would pay for anywhere from 50-80% of your estimate right there. I'm not discounting the 40-50 years of rail maintenance, but you would hope rail service could at least come close to breaking even by selling tickets. There's no profit coming out of an aircraft carrier group, unless you're the one selling them the supplies.
Property acquisition in the US more expensive than in Europe? I think not, at least for the immense swaths of land that make up most of the US' land mass.
The legal fees I see, but that's why most developed nations have legislature for disowning property owners of land necessary for infrastructure at a set compensation. Whether that's fair or just is up for ideological debate, I'm sure.