>>510633365
Probably yeah. Cars are getting more common in Japan, for example, but until recently almost nobody there owned a car. They've been popularized as part of a govt push toward suburbanization to reduce urban density in Tokyo and other major cities. Countries with high speed rail at present like China are building it with like 80% of the population carless and celebrating the fact that soon they'll double car ownership and only 60% of the population will be dependent on railways, while bragging about the fact they can go across town in just a few minutes thanks to their fast trains.

This is why I say industrial high-speed rail would be useful, despite being critical of passenger high-speed rail. If it's just industrial railways for transportation of capital goods to factories, refineries, etc. then it'll dramatically improve our economy, as our industry remains dependent on railways that badly need repair right now. If we replaced them with high-speed industrial railway, we would have a lot higher productivity in our plants because raw material would arrive faster and finished product would leave faster. We should start with areas with lots of big refineries and heavy industrial activity and spread from there.