Why can’t America have high-speed trains?

Imagine being able to travel from New York to Los Angeles without having to step on a plane, yet be able to do so in a fraction of the time it would take to drive. On the surface, that tantalizing prospect took a step closer with the news last month that a Japanese maglev train had reached a top speed of close to 400 mph, breaking its own world record in the process.

And the sight of futuristic looking trains whizzing past platforms at hundreds of miles per hour isn’t confined to Japan: China, France and Spain, to name a few, have their own high-speed rail networks. Indeed, while these bullet trains may look futuristic, they have been around for decades; they’re a tried and tested technology that the Japanese debuted over 50 years ago.

So surely it’s only a matter of time before large numbers of U.S. passengers are doing a daily commute to New York from Washington and Boston in about the time it would take them to drive to work in their own cities, right?

Not anytime soon.

While several countries have undertaken the tough work of raising the money to invest in bullet trains, it’s unlikely the United States will ever see the vast network of high-speed trains that blanket other countries. Indeed, passenger rail service in the United States lags behind much of the rest of the developed world, for several reasons.

For a start, much of the United States is not exactly an ideal market for high-speed rail. Compared to places where rail really flourishes – Japan and Western Europe, for instance – the United States is geographically vast. As a result, in much of the country, cities are far enough apart that air travel provides significant time savings, even compared to some of the fastest trains.

The layout of cities matters, too. When you arrive in Tokyo, Paris or Barcelona, it’s often convenient (and even pleasant) to walk to your final destination. When it’s not, a fast and frequent mass transportation system awaits to whisk you away. This is not the case in many American cities, where arriving by train typically means jumping into a cab or renting a car for the last leg of your journey. Simply put, in many sprawling U.S. cities, getting to your destination by train can still mean you’ve got quite a way yet to get home. We could change that. And we probably should. But we’re not there yet.

Still, there are several parts of the United States where high-speed rail makes a great deal of sense.

Just as importantly, rail on the Northeast Corridor can also compete with driving, mainly because traffic congestion makes driving in the region so slow and unreliable, while tolls and parking costs can make it an expensive and time-consuming option. Rail in the northeast even has a great track record; after Amtrak’s almost-high-speed Acela service began on the Northeast Corridor in 2000, ridership exploded, quickly outstripping air travel between New York and Washington.