They were invented decades ago.
They have fewer moving parts than wheelbois.
They require less maintenance.
There’s obviously some bottleneck in expanding maglev technology, but what is it?
Then it’s good that we don’t have them, isn’t it? Kool_Newt’s post implies that it’s due to a failing of capitalism, but this sounds like a win to me. I’d rather my money go towards food and housing than a faster or more comfortable experience doing something I rarely need.
One of the most common flights is US west coast to east coast. Normal high speed rail can’t do this in a reasonable time frame. We need something faster if we want to get reduce those flights.
One of the features of capitalism is externalizing the costs, especially of pollution.
Ah, that makes sense. So maglev is overall cheaper but still less profitable because the costs are paid where they’re incurred.
It is scientifically proven that high quality public transport, and especially train services, improves the lives of people and improves the economy.
Money spent on food is a total waste. No matter how much food you buy for people, they will eat all of it and will ask for more. Simply because you need to eat every day of your life.
This is also true for housing to some extent, as populations generally tend to grow over time, thus more and more houses will always be needed no matter how much you have built already. But houses take a lot more time to run out of as you don’t need a new house every day, only once every few years when the population increases.
But you can build a good railway system in the area once and then people will use it to earn their own money, to pay for their food themselves and to buy their own homes themselves. And they will also pay for railway maintenance and bring profit to the budget as well. It’s a one time investment which lasts virtually forever.
The government should invest in long term solutions: infrastructure, education, etc. There’s really no point investing anything into short term solutions. Housing can be a long term investment if done properly though. But that’s an off topic.
