I did sort of contradict myself there and say never and multi-decade plan.
Problems the US has:
* Lack of spoke and hub railways.
* Cars.
* Cost-per-mile, which if I understand correctly is a political and a union-thing.
* And just politics by itself.
It's not dissimilar in the UK, but somehow we muddle through it. I don't believe that "cheap" maglev will ever help the US, it's been around for decades, and the longest highspeed line built by the Chinese is 19 miles at a cost of "only" $1.3 bn (I'll leave it up to the reader about how realistic that construction cost would be in the West).
The US will still have the same problem huge construction costs, political lobbying from the airlines, no hub and spoke railways, a vast airport style set of car parking around any terminals that are built.
The West now suffers from pointless adversarial politics where the opposition votes the opposite to the government simply "because", and for no rational reason other than "it's the other party". Even once you get past that hurdle, it's how "cheap" is the cheapest bidder. Labour/labor laws and so on.
I would genuinely love to see the US lead the world with high speed rail, but I just can't see it.
China is backing off their high speed maglev trains. While it is possible to make maglev go that fast, wind resistance means it is far to costly. A large airplane (because it runs at 30,000 feet) is not only faster, it uses less energy.
If vacuum trains ever happen, then things change. However those are very expensive to build, and have safety issues. We can solve the engineering problems with safety, but the expense doesn't seem possible)
The year 2040. Two technologies combine make never a reality.
1. Maglev trains that travel at 350 miles per hour (600kph)
2. Self-driving taxis
Exhibit 1:
https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/china-fastest-maglev-train-in...
NY to LA in 10 hours by maglev sometime in this century.
The 4 hour maglev between Miami and NYC will be popular.