>>38
iirc ironically the typical excuse for this is safety standards, this is the reason that making passenger rail systems in the US is dramatically more expensive than elsewhere. the US until very recently quite literally refuses to use rather fundamental innovations like tilting trains, and articulated cars. for this reason the centrifugal force made it so that reusing existing tracks was deemed too dangerous because of centrifugal force. my state once considered linking together its three major towns by passenger rail reusing old lines, but came to the conclusion that they would have to rip out too many turns for it to meet safety standards and so abandoned the project. Other safety bugs make US trains dramatically more heavy than trains elsewhere making them use more fuel.
anyway, the US is clearly fine with poisoning everyone, and lack of safety due to the dangers of cars. this is all clearly due to vested interest continuing to make passenger trains nonviable, just as they did when they bribed every politician in the country to rip out the tram systems. admittedly it's also just part of US litigious culture, e.g. if I slip on your train, and you didn't meet every single excessive standard to the letter you will get sued. this in combination with a pile of paper work saying that it's the responsibility of non-disabled people to make everything accessible to disabled people means a whole lot of excessive regulatory burden. (this probably all goes back to the whole means-tested thing which anglos love so much)