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funny how that works
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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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China can do it faster because it's a dictatorship that simply takes the land on which it wants to build rail and pays the previous owner. In the US, there are far more legal hurdles for the government to acquire that land. Too many hurdles IMO, but going full dictatorship in order to have rail built faster is not the way.
China has had the most dramatic high speed rail transformation, but plenty of European countries have developed solid systems without going "full dictatorship."
Also, the USA used to skip over a lot of those legal hurdles when it came time to build a railroad (hence the phrase, "getting railroaded") but for various reasons we've lost the political will to do this.
I wonder about that with the UK. We already have a rail network, it's just old. Presumably we could upgrade it if we really wanted to without having to worry about securing the land, but there's presumably just no will to do it.
I think part of the problem is that in order to achieve such high speeds, high speed rail lines have to be really, really straight, and as flat as possible. Older railroad right-of-ways are often too twisty, curvy, and hilly. So, sadly it's not just an issue of new tracks & trainsets, in some cases there will need to be new routes.
At least, this has been an issue for Amtrak here in the USA. Their new Acela trains are pretty fast, but most of the line between Boston/NYC/DC was laid out in the 19th century. So it can only get up to its full speed on short sections of the track.
Again with the propanda. China is not a dictatorship. People actually have a lot of rights and power.
Even more than in the US, strangely when it comes to privacy for example. China has a system almost stricter than the European GDPR. American citizens can only dream of this sort of protection because your government is run by tech lobbyists.
Anyway you're making excuses for the inability of 'the greatest country on earth' to even build proper infrastructure for the people. Not only high speed rail, but the state of the roads, bridges and other crucial infrastructure is deplorable.
If you protest the government or attempt to unionize, and then the government disappears you or threatens to disappear your family, it's a dictatorship.