Have you been to Korea or China?

Japan may be better than Europe and way better than America, but the fact that their trains work at all is in spite of deregulation, privatization, and break up of JR and all the workarounds and laws passed they needed to get the “market solutions” to not just close non-profitable stations, fire half their work force, stop paying pensions, and raise rates to the point of unaffordability.

Which is why Shinkansen tickets are like 5x more expensive than in China. Also why every city has like 10 different transit companies with transfers that can mean “walk 2 blocks on the surface”. Under capitalism, the ideal railroad makes infinite money while running zero trains and owning zero infrastructure. You literally need to use legal means to get them to deviate from this.

Neoliberals: Correct. That’s why the only possible way to have HSR is if you give the railroads infinite land to develop and interest free loans. Then if you’re lucky, they’ll subsidize the unprofitable railroads by renting out the most expensive land in the city as exorbitant rates! Or maybe they’ll cut rail service and raise ticket prices anyway! Shame there’s no alternative.