Its amazing how little foresight the U.S. has when it so  our infrastructure...even our energy.  Here's a clip of what the S. Koreans have done, maximizing the use of their infrastructure, decreasing reliance on carbon energy and providing a means for non-auto travelers to travel more safely. The even have a super train, which I have rode, that can get out from one end of the country to the other withing 2 hours (used to be a 6 hr train ride), for $75 in business class.   This is one, of the many reasons, why we have diminished as a country. We'd rather spend our treasure chasing terrorist and financing regime changes and invading countries in the middle-east instead of doing what needs to do here on our own soil

Do so many young Korean women attend U.S. tunner car events? They aren't promoting mass transit.

The bike lane would be built to the side of the highway requiring thousands of extra acres to be got through imminent domain. Instead of solar panels to shield bicyclist from sun and rain commercial, electrically lit billboards would do the job, and the cost to light them would be passed on to tax payers making less than 50K/yr.

For perspective, South Korea is 20% the size of California....

They even appointed a Czar like official to head the project, good for him but completely ridiculous in my book.

How many?
How long to build?

The real reason is we as people and those we sent to congress are on a mission of self interest instead of national interest. More specifically, we are country controlled by the wealthy and their paid lobbyists, and the politicians they fund in elections.  

It has everything to with the State of the Union:

The Chinese, for all of their accomplishments over the last few decades have a horrible record for quality and safety. I think I'll pass on the Chinese bullet train, I'll take a real bullet if I want to kill myself.

America has the worlds largest concentration of drug addicts... Talk about self interest VS National interest.

...metal technology à la "Terminator" while we're trying to perfect the breakfast burrito."

I didn't have anything else to do, so I watched SNL. I liked their rip on CNN. For some reason you remind me of Monyahan's(sic) character on the MK and Portia skit. I was at a loss as to what that was supposed to be.

Not by me, anyway.  
 There are many Americans continually  mocking  the Chinese and Russians with their false belief, Chinese and Russians   are   failures at  invention, resorting to copying,  similar to posters   constantly copying  and pasting   Huffpost  concoctions of exaggeration.  
   
   
   An  advantage most  Chinese have over many Americans obsessed with perfecting the breakfast  burrito, and other nonsensical research wasting  time, very few Chinese spend  a second  googling   Kim and Kane's latest shopping trip .  
   
   The link below is old news  showing there are more capable and  inventive people  World Wide  than American popular opinion decrees.  
  http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20975580

When people are not focused on isms.

country smells like human urine and crap radiating from the open sewers that run along the streets. Take a trip outside of Seoul - which stinks too - and you would see it. Pohang with it's steel mill is lung cancer waiting to happen.

and I am as healthy and happy as a man can be. Of course I do "self medicate" with alcohol, but since in my case "nothing is broken" I see no reason to try to fix it.

I will agree that we are as overmedicated a nation as I could possibly imagine. Personally, I don't even take aspirin, and my days of recreational drugs are well behind me, so booze is my drug of choice. I sorta wished I still liked pot as I am quite aware that while claiming that "it's good for you" is a bit of a stretch, I certainly won't argue the fact that it is by far the "least bad for you", and a hell of a lot safer than any of the pills being shoved down Americans throats by Big Pharma

Sure, guy. What a waste! Hunting down people who have shown us how willing they are to kill us, indiscriminately. Why, we could all be packed into metal capsules next to strangers. We could be just like South Korea.

Korea seems to have killed several birds with a single stone while Baltimore practices bureaucracy financed by the citizens.  

but the Feds too.

when tiny kids (3-4 y-o) are expected to go to school and sit quietly at a desk, and then go home and do homework. If they're lucky they might get a 30 minute recess, but even that's not available to many kids these days as playgrounds are being sold off to developers. Those kids, who aren't meant to sit still at that age, are fidgety and disruptive, of course, so the teachers give the parents a hard time, and then the parents put the kids on ritalin. And so it begins...

Kids and the majority of adults are addicted to sugar.