The recent earthquake off the coast of Japan derailed a high-speed train and forced East Japan Railway to shut down the rail line. Fixing the line, the company admitted, may take “a considerable amount of time.”
Highways are generally more resilient than trains. They usually provide alternate routes if one route is damaged and roads are easier to fix than railroads, especially high-speed rail lines that must be built to high-precision standards. Fortunately, no one in the United States would build a high-speed rail line in an earthquake zone, right?
