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The American mind is just incapable of comprehending trains
We can comprehend just fine. There's a project, California High Speed Rail, under construction to connect these two cities. The trouble is that our political and economic systems have become so sclerotic that China has built an entire HSR network since work on this line began, and it won't even be done before 2031.
We can still build highways, because the political and regulatory mechanisms to create them were fine-tuned as the system crystalized into inflexibility.
Frankly, this exact inability of U.S. society to change and adapt to new conditions was the signal indicator of the incipient collapse, for me.
It's funny because 80% of comments about general "Americans" are also falling for the propaganda
If you wanted to build a track for these "high speed buses" it would require special safety features, signalling, barriers etc. that make it look much more like a train track than like a motorway. So you'd gain exactly nothing over building a train track.
Well, yes, exactly. A nation cannot remain an economic superpower by frittering away its wealth on expensive, but suboptimal shit like a "highway" for high-speed buses. If it's no longer able able to build effective, cheap infrastructure because it doesn't benefit an entrenched industry, then collapse isn't far off.
Not true. Not even close. According to the article, the bus lanes would be built on existing infrastructure. The bridges exist, the right-of-way exists, there would be comparatively little political resistance, the cost would be MUCH lower. Also, maintenance costs would be much lower.
But those aren't going to do 180 km/h. No existing bus will achieve this kind of speed on a regular motorway. This is all just a bunch of hot air.
Everything but rail, huh?
Build a train you fucken cowards
🚂🚃🚃🚃
There is no amount of traffic that would make me consider getting in a robot-controlled 140 mph bus lmao.
They should explore eminent domain and build real transit.
But what if there aren't enough minority neighbourhoods to bulldoze?
The farmland between LA and SF isn't minority neighborhoods. But my comment was more an off the cuff dismissal of this ass-backward bus idea than an actual policy opinion. Here's a real policy opinion: Stop making excuses and run the fuckin trains.
There you have your problem: That farmland belongs to rich white people.
I thought they ate the onion but somehow this appears to be an actual serious study. I can't imagine how uncomfortable a bus going 140mph would be. At that point the engineering required to keep the road in appropriate shape is likely more expensive than just using rails...
The autobahn already achieves this on a daily basis for personal vehicles. It should absolutely be doable to build dedicated busses along highways that can reach this speed assuming separated lanes.
A key benefit here is that existing highway infrastructure can be repurposed rather than needing to buy (expensive) land and building a rail system from scratch (takes time).
This is an outside the box solution that might be self-justifying: providing faster (better) service than cars and potentially offloading enough passengers to reduce more than 1 lane of traffic. Many ways to get more public transit usage in the US are probably better than the status quo.
Would proper rail be better? Absolutely.
This is terribly inefficient in comparison, but maybe could be cheaper, faster and easier to implement. Worth having a few guys look into it at least.
The reason for busses is simple and seems to be ignored by literally everyone.
The private property between SF and LA keeps increasing in price so the costs for the project are in the billions before anything is even built. The signing of the land is in the billions. Now build a rail in Trump's economy and it becomes nearly impossible to succeed at anything rail.
Busses builds an audience that can be used to later justify rail to get buses off the road. Americans hate big trucks on the road but there they are anyway. It's a slow burn turn to morph the car brain into train brain.
Weird how cities used eminent domain to bulldoze entire black and Hispanic neighborhoods to build highways yet can’t use eminent domain to get some rich assholes overpriced real estate for this.
recycling the classics
Obama Replaces Costly High-Speed Rail Plan With High-Speed Bus Plan
Wow, 140MPH! That's ... still 84MPH slower than the fastest trains in Europe, and 127MPH slower than the fastest train in Asia (Shanghai maglev).
These stupid fantasies are still a pale shadow of what the rest of the world has already managed to achieve. Just finish building the fucking train already!
Not to mention that's quite a dangerous speed for a bus
I bet they will do a "special track" for them
You can always trust in the US-americans to do the right thing, after having exhausted every other possible option.
Trouble is, every time you think they've hit rock bottom, they'll find a new depth to sink to.
Why is American society so braindead?
We are a nation of idolwhorshipers. We whorship celebrities and dream of becoming soldiers and/or princesses. We are commiting a genocide with no fucks given. We like to be used and abused. Skeet skeeet into the rag and throw us on to the ground. We were raised wrong. Just put the tacobell grade D meat on the credit card. YOLO We are sluts and we hate ourselves. The men in the imperial core religious or not get our dicks cut at birth because... well just because. We are imperial slaves. We have no history but phoney optics from the past and gallons and gallons of human blood. We are losers.. assigned at birth. We are fake smilers and colonial jailers. We are turds who like the smell of turds. We only know our shitbox. We are creatures of the mostly lowly and depraved
Trying to turn I5 into the autobahn with a 140 mph bus lane would result in so much chaos and destruction that honestly I'm all for it.
There is 0 chance that the average American drivers liscense having brain could comprehend this concept.
Most people can't even keep an actually reasonable following distance, or understand the concept of a passing lane.
This is a literally comically stupid idea, its a B movie plot element from an 80s scifi movie.
Fuck it -> Do it for the lols.
There are already rails between LA and SF. Why not use them?
Because it takes 8+ hours.
I was being rhetorical. There is infrastructure that can be developed here.
Y'all, they're building a high speed train, but it's mired in problems, and if the economy crashes, it will be decades before it's completed. This would be a medium-term solution that's easy to build, and easy to take down when it's no longer needed.
These "high speed buses" don't even exist in theory. So it would just be plain old regular buses. You can have these now.
psssst! .... trains....
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!
this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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