Given recent history - for example, the Boston Big Dig and the $11 billion price tag for a new NYC bus terminal - it’s clear that there is not enough money to build high performance trains in the USA absent the hiring of a magic dwarf who can spin straw into gold.
The announcement of such a project would attract a sky-darkening swarm of featherbedding consultants, bureaucrats looking for another two decades of locked-in “work”, cost-plus contractors, and NIMBY protest groups with their attorneys, all well equipped with wallets full of political grease and ready to settle in for the long term like lampreys hooking into a fat sea trout.
Five years in, not a mile of track will have been laid, the cost estimates will have quadrupled, and taxpayers will be screaming to be let off the hook.
Everyone knows this. And this is why you can’t have nice trains.
