Let’s run the numbers. For simplicity, let’s shorthand the Giant Lizard to “GL.” The US is a car culture country, GL is not. They rely mostly on public/semi public transportation methods like buses, subways and ride share services. In fact, the US have millions more in paved road than the GL does though the US lack cost effective, ubiquitous last mile public transportation. Then again, Americans really like their privacy and space so public transportation to them is probably equivalent to how GLs feel about renting vs buying a Soviet apartment unit (everyday American houses with front and backyards are called luxurious mansions over there and cost tens of millions of dollars). Ocekay frequently wrote overnight trains, subways and buses and mentioned random attractive young people from the opposite sex frequently lean their heads on Ocekay’s shoulders for some reason. Ocekay wisely reject these as many of these may or may not be scams/entrapments but the motives/ethics of these entities are certainly questionable. Anyway, the point being, Americans love their privacymobiles while the GL love the cost effectiveness of their public transportations. The downside to that is any poor GL could randomly walk into your neighborhood without any barrier to entry cost wise because their public transportation essentially covers every single neighborhood corner in the city with some cities having hundreds of subway stations and tens of thousands of bus stops. There is a major hidden downside however that is rarely discussed.
Besides the surveillance, every single subway and high speed rail station will expose one to significant radiation due to a combination of the hand held wands, X-ray machines and metal detectors. Since a significant amount of GLs ride the subway a few times everyday, this accumulate to potentially cancer level radiations in a span of decades. The public pandemic health risk due to poor hygiene/health screening/social etiquettes, natural disaster risks and uneventful events from riding these public transportation in GL can never be underestimated. The US has a much higher percentage of private vehicle ownership and a large portion of GL’s cars are actually share ride vehicles that are leased from car companies through agencies. GL also provide huge subsidies and require mandatory scrap of vehicles as soon as they turn eight years old. Gasoline is extremely expensive in GL when purchasing power is accounted for therefore the government pushes people to buy EVs granting them subsidies and fast track to a license plate which is extremely difficult to get for a non-EV vehicle. The issue with EV is range, life expectancy due to the exorbitant cost of changing batteries every eight years and charging time. Some estimate though GL has more drivers than the US, their private-use passenger car ownership is only about 10% of the population versus nearly 90% in the US. Most people also don’t realize in GL, almost every single highway is a toll charged at a mile basis nearly equivalent to gasoline cost. Basically everything cost a lot of money in terms of car ownership that only the middle and upper class can afford to buy a vehicle and keep it on the road. Parking cost money almost everywhere. License plate cost a lot of money. Imported parts cost a lot of money. Tickets are issued automatically by cameras located every nook and cranny costing a lot of money. Then if your license plate is from outside of the area, local cops may give you a hard time by positioning you for higher probability of getting a ticket. I didn’t even bother to mention the incidentals like exorbitant cost and efforts required to pass rigorous and time consuming, multi-part driving tests and many other costs you wouldn’t have to pay at all or have to pay at extreme high costs in America.
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Massive high-speed train network in the US.
I didn’t even mention all the jaycrawlers who literally don’t give a F about traffic laws or laws in general who either accidentally get hit by a car or orchestrate an accident all of which requires the drivers to pay a large sum of money even if they are found to be not guilty and faultless. That’s communism for you, that’s the future of CA and LA for you. Bottomline, it cost a lot to own and operate a vehicle in GL land. What the US lack in high speed train it makes up in airplanes. The US has the most airplanes in the world and have the most airports in the world with nearly a hundred times more civilian only airports than GL’s and more than half of the entire world’s airports. Many of GL’s airports are either military only or civil and military dual use airports which creates significant inconveniences for passengers due to restrictions and airspace related scheduling conflicts. Much of GL’s high speed trains are also redundant or losing a lot of money due to occupancy issues. They built these ghost apartments, skyscrapers, roads, bridges and railroad tracks in places either no one can afford to utilize or are out of nowhere destinations to boost up their GDP by selling land to real estate developers who will market these places as convenient locations with fully-built infrastructure. Private vehicles total operating cost and air travel cost in GL even nominally speaking can cost more than the US. GL’s economy of scale is more about packing sardines than free ranging chicken to raise happy bulls that want you to…nevermind. Luxury and service are the last thing on the mind of sardine packers. Now let’s talk about the donkey in the room, long-haul transportation.
US is bicoastal with an extremely long coastline and the GL is single coastal with a restricted and much shorter coastline. That’s a huge issue? Because ocean freight liners can carry tens of thousands of containers in one haul while it takes around 100 trains to do the same at much higher cost in aggregate even considering the difference in speed (about 60% faster). Also, not every country has commercial cargo train connections to every country/region where almost certainly ocean freight liners do.I do think building regional high speeds like the ones from SF to LA if it ever finish in the next few decades yield significant economic advantages as it will likely take 1.5 hours for the trip and will likely be very profitable due to skipping the one to two hour airport early arrivals and security checks. I predict the US realistically only need a few high speed routes from major US cities that make complete economic sense and won’t canibalize from existing transportation methods as much of the increase will come from leisure and additional business travels. GL is losing a lot of money in high speed rails as out of its tens of thousands of routes, only a dozen or so is actually breaking even or making some money the rest are just taxpayer and state subsidy money. US only has a few cities with million plus city propers versus the hundreds GL has hence it makes more sense to be more decentralized on the transportation end for the US but can focus on strategically building the high speed rail network for the few extreme large cities that will most likely yield significant profits without taking away business from existing service providers.