They're passenger (and freight) trains. The rails were built for travel, not for scenic display.
OTOH, the sure aren't high speed rail. Most of the lines were build over 50 years ago.

OTOH, the BART example was for a "high speed train", though I believe the speed is limited underground. But the rise is from perhaps two or three stories below ground to about 1 story above ground. That said, I believe that the rise is about 2-3 miles long, so it's not steep.

Europe is plenty big. As big as the US but denser.

Sure most high speed companies run lines about 500km long, but there are plenty of connections through large parts of Europe that are high speed. And some individual runs are longer than 500km. You can travel through must of western Europe on high speed trains for distances much longer than 500km.

Someone talked about NIMBY and was modded troll, but the fact is they were right. Among the biggest opposition to high speed rail are NIMBY folks, and for understandable reasons. High speed, grade-separated rail really carves up the landscape, much like a freeway does, which deeply impacts people living near the proposed rail lines. Freeways have the advantage that their right of ways were carved out decades ago and people are used to them (and see the value). This could be true of rail also, but it would take several generations.

And when I see proposals to go from LA to SF, or from NYC to Chicago, I think that's great for people in those cities, but what about all the communities in between? What's the benefit to them? Is the high speed rail going to make some stops? By itself high speed rail comes up lacking in my opinion. We require much more than high speed rail, but that's never going to happen.

N.B.: I good system of automated taxis could do the job...but note "good system". Most places I've ever lived the taxis were both too expensive and to difficult to use to do the job.

A HSR network is really problematic without a really good local transit network. (One you can reasonably carry your baggage on.)

Sometimes using the highway ROW works, other times it doesn't. This partially depends on the design of the highways, and partially depends one whether they have the same destination. A train station under a section of elevated roadway can work well...but if you don't have that convenient elevated roadway things can get more difficult.

I can't even estimate costs, but they can get pretty high. (And sometimes it's easy.)

Since there are trains that go over the rocky mountains, I think that argument fails. (But it might succeed if you argue practicality rather than possibility.)

FWIW, The SFBay Area BART system has high speed trains that move from elevated to underground. It's not a steep grade, of course, but it's done. (IIRC "high speed" for the BART system is around 70 mph, and is only obtained on the long straight sections. Of course, my knowledge is multiple decades old.)

There are also real problems with sparsely available origin and destination points. And the cost of building the lines through developed areas.

If you build a good system, it will be more efficient for the areas that it serves. But rail transit has fixed routes. This makes it inflexible. And you really need to multi-track the rails, because breakdowns will occasionally happen.

FWIW, I feel that streetcars are much more plausible/effective/significant per unit cost than are high speed rails. High speed rail is useful AFTER you solve the local distribution problems.

Most geothermal heat plants aren't long term without repair for various different reasons. IIRC, internal fouling is one of the main reasons. This sounds like it might be a different approach, though of course you need a volcano to make it work.

Well, when you extract the heat from the rock it becomes less fluid.

Sure, yes that also. It definitely does not automatically mean "just run rails along the along the interstate"

I appreciate the efforts of some of these new nuclear companies but this is starting to feel like VC bait, there's all of sudden more cheap money flowing and everyone is after it no matter how impractical the idea.

I get the idea but we have enough good locations and enough problems to sort out building reactors above ground before we start building them a mile underground.

"Hey, what are the two most expensive infrastructure projects currently available? Deep tunnels and nuclear reactors. Well chocolate and peanut butter go together, why not those?!"

Fuck it here's an idea, just build reactors on the bottom of the sea floor. Now give me money you venture capital dopes.

Also I've always thought there was GenIV reactor concepts for this type of "bury it and forget it" system already, the Lead Cooled Fast Reactor

Jesus christ, twice now. Interstate means "inside state" not the literal interstate highway system.

To be clear I was not talking about the literal interstate highways.

You bring up HSR and some folks imagine trains cross country but really HSR should be focused on interstates. Florida is a good example, we have the Brightline between South Florida and Orlando and soon to expand to Tampa. Add in Jacksonville and you're pretty set for the state. If you want to go further after that link Jacksonville to Atlanta.

Take Texas for example, the fact anyone flies between Dallas/Houston/San Antonio/Austin is a transport system failure. It takes more time, more hassle, more emissions and eats up flight slots that could be used for more appropriate flights, there should be a Texas Triangle rail system. Same reason California HSR for all it's issues is still an obvious idea, you should be able to take a train between SD to LA to SJ to SF.

The Acella sets the model and being the only usable HSR in the country since NYC/Boston/Philly/DC are obvious routes and it gets used.

https://kpmg.com/ph/en/home/in...
"The short answer is that the Tax Code enforces a Stock Transaction Tax (STT) on every sale, barter or exchange of shares in a listed company. Under Section 127(A) of the Tax Code, as amended by the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Law, the STT rate is 6/10 of 1% based on the gross selling price or gross value in money of the shares of stock sold, bartered, exchanged or otherwise disposed.
      The burden to pay the STT, as provided in Revenue Regulations (RR) No. 6-08, is imposed on the seller or transferor and remitted by the seller or transferor's broker. The stockbroker who effected the sale has the duty to collect the tax from the seller upon issuance of the confirmation of sale, issue the corresponding receipt thereof, and remit the same to the tax authorities. "

Would such a STT tax in the USA reduce a lot of possibly harmful churn from algorithmic trading? Or would it be extremely harmful to everyone by reducing liquidity? Wondering how that is working out in the Philippines?