Brookenium

It’s functional in that people can get from point A to point B when they need to. Flights aren’t prohibitively expensive enough to push people to take the tax increase. A flight from Minneapolis to Chicago is like $100-$200, and for the rare occurrence someone needs that specific route, it’s not that expensive to pay for.

Don’t get me wrong, we’d be much better off with a national rail network connecting major cities. But Americans are some of the most cost-averse voters, both on the left and right. And you’re looking at a multi-billion dollar project for something like a Chicago to NYC line. The citizens of Illinois and NYC aren’t keen to take the tax hike. Fed won’t pay for it since it only benefits 2 specific voter bases and doesn’t do anything to swing an election (Dems win those cities anyway, Republicans will never take them over even if they funded rail).

The problem isn’t that it can’t happen, the problem is people won’t vote to pay more in taxes. Left or right, we’ve shown that any candidate that runs on increasing taxes gets slaughtered because the voter base is too short sighted. New rail is incredibly expensive, taxes would need to be increased to pay for it (the money HAS to come from somewhere).

It’s “functional” in that people can get from Chicago to NYC relatively quickly - through a flight. Sure, it’s gonna cost a few hundred $$ a person, but it’s not enough of a barrier to get people to pay significantly more in taxes for a few years to pay for an alternative.

The federal government isn’t going to step in and do something like this ever either. They’re the only ones who could even conceivably do this, but spending billions for 2 specific states doesn’t sway voters from the other 48.

The biggest issue is that it’s expensive and what we have now is functional. People aren’t keen on dropping tons of cash to make something better because they’re short-sighted and don’t care about the future.

Also NIMBY’s would shut it down hard, not wanting to live near the rail. There’d also be a lot of eminent domain claims when the rail would get close to any station point.

Back when the US had excellent rail networks, we could have upgraded and maintained them for passenger rail. But so much has been ripped out and paved over that it’d be very expensive to bring it back… and no one wants to pay more in taxes despite receiving more money back in benefit.

This is the heart of the plan. Postal delays ensuring these votes won’t be counted. Nothing “illegal” about “incompetence”.

There’s a reason they removed “Don’t be Evil” from their corporate tenets. The almighty dollar comes first to them and they refuse to risk angering The Orange One.