To put this into perspective, China's high-speed rail project in Indonesia connecting Jakarta and Bandung (a distance of 143 km) at a speed of 350 km/h was completed in just four months at total cost of $7.3 billion.
This line has seen an impressive number of passengers, with approximately 2 million people utilizing the service.
Still worth it in the country with a military budget over 8 times that but ffs there’s no reason that should cost more than 10% of what it does
In other countries inflating the costs of public works to hand over money to private interests is called “corruption,” what’s it called here?
High labor costs due to too many unions, usually.
(This is a lie: the US has lower labor costs and union participation than other countries that have trains. But it's the answer I see most.)
Lobbying
No no, this is the result of the lobbying
I agree that if $100 billion is going to be wasted regardless, I would rather have SOME of that money go towards high speed rail and the rest go to oligarchs’ pockets, rather than 60% of it going to weapons and 40% of it going to oligarchs’ pockets.
Exactly, if we’re gonna line oligarchs pockets regardless I’d rather it be while while building trains than bombs
Private-public partnership