I think the problem with the US railway system is not the lack of technology, but politics: People seem to love bold and mostly unrealistic proposals like Elon Musk's "Hyperloop" or the Maglev technology but seem to be a lot less passionate about making existing infrastructure better (which understandably is much more boring):
As an example, I just took the Amtrak train from NYC to Montreal to attend PyCon (which is awesome!), which took all in all 11 hours to cover a distance a little over 530 km. For comparison, going from my hometown Saarbrücken in Germany to Paris (which is about the same distance) takes less than two hours (1:40h to be exact) with TGV or ICE trains. Arguably for the latter there is no border to be crossed (OK actually there is but none that is patroled) but still, this kind of makes you wonder why a high-tech nation like the USA doesn't have a similar system of high-speed trains in place, and I think that the answer has more to do with political unwillingness and lobbying than with lack of technology.
BTW, in Germany there once was an attempt to build a Transrapid (our version of Maglev that is deployed in Shanghai, developed by Siemens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid) track to connect the Munich airport to the city centre (see "Munich Link" section in the article above), but calculations showed that the achievable time saving compared to the latest generation of ICE high-speed trains would be only 3 minutes, whereas the additional cost would have been around 3 BN €, which lead to the project being eventually ditched.
Like many routes in the US/Canada the NYC<->Montreal one is shared with freight, and for a significant distance on it there's only one track. Since the freight lines own the track they take priority, so the passenger trains have to go slowly, and often give way.
That route, picturesque though it is, is also not remotely economically viable. The parts of New York state it connects to are very poor compared to the endpoints, and it just doesn't get enough passengers. New York subsidise it to provide those communities with some links. (A drive through more remote parts of NY can be really depressing, but the Adirondacks are amazing).
The simple reality is an improved normal speed train service wouldn't make a difference, but the cost to build high speed is ridiculous either because the distances are too large or you're in already built up areas.
I think the real problem is that Americans identify cars with freedom and rail with "socialism" or something. Throughout much of the U.S. there is a profound anti-public-transit sentiment. It's viewed as a waste of money, a boondoggle, etc.
That's because railways lines in the US are over 100 years old and France's TGV runs on dedicated tracks and right of ways.
Btw shootout to SB. I was born/grew up in Saarland too. Small world!
Yeah it's a small world indeed! Admittedly dedicated tracks are a great thing, but even in Germany where tracks are shared between local trains and ICEs the average travel speed is pretty decent.
Because Germany bothers to update tracks and DB uses those tracks usually for passenger trains. US tracks are rarely if ever updated and are mostly owned by freight companies. Many trains don't only go slow, but have to wait minutes, sometimes hours for permission to roll on such tracks while freight trains have priority.
> I think that the answer has more to do with political unwillingness and lobbying than with lack of technology
I think it is a bit less nefarious than that. The simple fact is that there is not a whole lot of demand for these services. The major corridors are covered just fine (planes, trains and automobiles) and building a high speed train wouldn't really offer too much benefit and the cost would be astronomical.
That's kind of hard to believe with the Montreal region having more than 4.5 million inhabitants and NY more than 10 million, surely some of them would like to take the train between the two cities once in a while.
I understand though that in the US planes and automobiles are considered viable alternatives to trains, especially considering the average distances between cities here, which tend to be much larger than in Europe.
high speed trains go between cities the wealthy want them to go between. They may want/need to work in one but prefer another to live in.
High speed trains don't solve the problem the average worker has and never will. They do not spend nearly the time traveling the "jet set" does. The type of trains they can benefit from, both light and heavy rail, are localized and definitely not sexy.
Besides, as technology ramps up the need to travel for business goes down, let alone automated automobiles, electrically powered, and solar charged, will about end the need for trains except for cargo. US uses trains more than most countries for moving cargo.
I really have to disagree when you say that high-speed trains are for the "jet set": There are countless people that need to commute between different cities for professional or private reasons, and most of them are from the middle-class and would definitely value and be ready to pay for speedy transportation. I agree that such a system would not be for the "average worker" though (whoever that is these days).
Agreed, Frankfurt and Hamburg are pretty ok though. And in Berlin it's not only the transportation to the airport but the airport itself that sucks ;) *
*the announced opening date of the new airport has been delayed by several years to the point where it's questionable if it will ever open...
Munich is ridiculous. Taking the S Bahn to the airport takes and hour and literally stops at tons with barely more than a handful of houses (where also no one seems to get on or off). Waste of time.
-To my knowledge it's still a completely hypothetical technology without an existing proof-of-concept prototype, so it's unclear how fast it could be brought to maturity.
-Supposing it could be realized as planned it's still unlikely that the initial cost-effectiveness would be better than that of existing, alternative solutions such as the Maglev, Transrapid or even conventional bullet trains, which haven't yet reached their theoretical limitations in speed and efficiency.
An example: At an hypothetical average speed of 960 km/h (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop), the Hyperloop could traverse the distance between LA and SF in about 30 mins. For comparison, the current speed record for a TGV is 560 km/h, which yields a theoretical travel time of slightly less than 1 hour for the same route. I think it's questionable whether the 30 minute gain in travel time would justify the large amount or R&D necessary to make the Hyperloop a reality, let alone make this a viable economic undertaking. Of course this doesn't mean that it's impossible (it is not), just that I think it won't become a reality in the near future (but then again, people tend to be horribly wrong when making predictions about this kind of stuff).
When Musk unveiled Hyperloop, he used sleight of hand to make it look dramatically less expensive than the conventional rail system currently being built. Specifically, Hyperloop, as proposed, only runs within the central valley, from the northern side of the San Gabriel Mountains to the eastern side of the Diablo Range. San Francisco is on the western side of the Diablos and Los Angeles is on the southern side of the San Gabriels. It adds an one to two hours (on each end) to drive from the city center to the proposed hyperloop endpoint.
It should surprise no one that it is less expensive to build a track which avoids crossing two mountain ranges--yet Musk compared the cost of building a hyperloop in the central valley to that of a building a conventional train from LA to San Francisco. When you compare apples to apples (conventional vs. hyperloop in the central valley), conventional rail comes out much cheaper.
As an example, I just took the Amtrak train from NYC to Montreal to attend PyCon (which is awesome!), which took all in all 11 hours to cover a distance a little over 530 km. For comparison, going from my hometown Saarbrücken in Germany to Paris (which is about the same distance) takes less than two hours (1:40h to be exact) with TGV or ICE trains. Arguably for the latter there is no border to be crossed (OK actually there is but none that is patroled) but still, this kind of makes you wonder why a high-tech nation like the USA doesn't have a similar system of high-speed trains in place, and I think that the answer has more to do with political unwillingness and lobbying than with lack of technology.
BTW, in Germany there once was an attempt to build a Transrapid (our version of Maglev that is deployed in Shanghai, developed by Siemens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid) track to connect the Munich airport to the city centre (see "Munich Link" section in the article above), but calculations showed that the achievable time saving compared to the latest generation of ICE high-speed trains would be only 3 minutes, whereas the additional cost would have been around 3 BN €, which lead to the project being eventually ditched.