We don’t have any route where the cities are that large and closely spaced except arguably the Boston-NYC-DC corridor, and just try acquiring a new arrow-straight right-of-way through all that development. (Existing RR rights of way aren’t straight enough, and are more valuable hauling freight anyhow.)

Of course, the final Chinese “advantage” appears to be a very fast, cheap, and certain eminent domain process: just bribe a few officials and send hired thugs to kick the people out of their homes and businesses. No extended litigation, only small compensation to pay, and those that complain too loudly can be made to disappear.

They are meeting some heavy resistance from farmers who are losing valuable grapes, and the usual NIMBYs. This is a relatively new phenomena here, though. When they built the first part of this line from Paris to Tours, it was very close to a straight line, and if your house was in the way, then “tant pis”. Now the French are learning about environmental sensitivity. It will be interesting to see how they buy/condemn right-of-way in California.

On a second note, here’s an article about a scenario in which light rail might actually make sense due to drastically different economics:

China is building out their light rail system in a big way. (See: http://blog.foolsmountain.com/2010/02/04/high-speed-rails-in-china/). Now, payoff might not be economically feasible at todays rater, compared to European systems (as the article points out, the economic savings are higher in Europe due to average cost of labor), but there is the argument that exchange rates and cost of labor in China will change soon; at this time, labor is dirt-cheap there right now, so the cost of actually building light rail is at what will probably turn out to be an all-time low, while labor costs will make the investment pay off once they rise. Odd.