Not so friendly reminder that musk specifically came up with, and pushed, for hyperloop knowing that it would never be made, as an effort to stop the development of highspeed rail in America and shift all political discussions of it because “something better is around the corner”:
As I’ve written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it. Several years ago, Musk said that public transit was “a pain in the ass” where you were surrounded by strangers, including possible serial killers, to justify his opposition.
Also: 2024 update, the total length of China’s high-speed rail tracks has now reached well over 45,000 km, or 28,000 miles, by the end of 2023.
They are additionally five years ahead of schedule and expect to double the total number within ten years. And, before someone inevitably complains about “how expensive it is”, they are turning over a net-profit of over $600M USD a year.
Your evaluation of how they build trains is as problematic as of how they build housing.
Because you haven’t seen that. You are evaluating the mapping of that in some discourse popular among fans of “government doing stuff” in the USA.
You don’t know how effective it is.
What we surely know is that China’s a vastly different country, so their processes won’t be applicable at all. Americans who want to do things the way they do in China forget how much a worker (or even an engineer) in China earns and what their labor rights are (none).
I mean, considering USA is already an immigrant country, it would be poetic to have an immigration program of the “half-slave work for 10 years on railroad-building projects, then citizenship” kind. But that wouldn’t solve the problem of funds being embezzled.
I’ll be fine without considering your opinion on that, to be honest.