Yes, railroads are rarely profitable. It’s usually a investment which you recover in the form of greater mobility and economic opportunities it brings. What happens in US/UK is that after years of pumping money into the project and cutting scope in desperate attempts to finish it it becomes impossible to recover it in any form because it simply doesn’t move enough people. Government sees it as a failure and is reluctant to invest in other projects. Without continuity private companies can’t plan long term and focus only on one project trying to get as much money out of it as possible. And the cycle continues…
Another issue is the car-centric culture of the US and the fact that rail and any other form of public transportation directly impedes upon the car companies’ profits (including building sidewalks). This means that any project has to fight an uphill battle against corporate lobbyists or avoid simply being bought out and disbanded like what happened to the various highspeed rail companies in the 2000s.
France is another interesting one to take a look at. I watched a video awhile ago on the history of highspeed rail in France, and if I remember correctly, while they’re culturally closer to the US and the UK, highspeed rail has a history as a point of competitive national pride for the French and so they’re culturally favorable to it because they’ve held the title for the fastest trains in the world a couple of times.
Yes, railroads are rarely profitable. It’s usually a investment which you recover in the form of greater mobility and economic opportunities it brings. What happens in US/UK is that after years of pumping money into the project and cutting scope in desperate attempts to finish it it becomes impossible to recover it in any form because it simply doesn’t move enough people. Government sees it as a failure and is reluctant to invest in other projects. Without continuity private companies can’t plan long term and focus only on one project trying to get as much money out of it as possible. And the cycle continues…
Another issue is the car-centric culture of the US and the fact that rail and any other form of public transportation directly impedes upon the car companies’ profits (including building sidewalks). This means that any project has to fight an uphill battle against corporate lobbyists or avoid simply being bought out and disbanded like what happened to the various highspeed rail companies in the 2000s.
France is another interesting one to take a look at. I watched a video awhile ago on the history of highspeed rail in France, and if I remember correctly, while they’re culturally closer to the US and the UK, highspeed rail has a history as a point of competitive national pride for the French and so they’re culturally favorable to it because they’ve held the title for the fastest trains in the world a couple of times.