Comment Re:The problem is the right of way (Score 2) 102
... The curves are on land.
However the basic problem is that raising the maximum speed is not going to make any difference when the previous trains couldn't reach their maximum speed either.
https://www.sealytutoring.com/... The curves on dedicated bullet-train tracks (not shared with slow-commuter trains and not shared with freight) must be curved to attain even moderately high speeds end-to-end on the line. In this regard, railroads are not that much different than banked curves on high-speed automotive roads that has been state-of-the-art for many decades now. Half-hearted attempts to achieve bullet trains in the USA need to quit living in the 19th-century past of the Promontory-Point-era concept of what a railroad is and is not. Indeed, the USA needs to decide whether it wants bullet trains as true high-speed rail or me-too also-ran participation-trophy kinda sorta a little bit fast trains for which we use the pathetic term "high-speed" rail instead to make ourselves feel good as a national-pride salve in a failed-engineering wound that Americans don't like to talk about. Aspire to even remotely be in the same league as the Japanese, or go home and hang it up and retire as a has-been.