For short distances high-speed rail can be a good option, particularly in connecting neighboring cities (LA-SF, etc).
The problems with all these projects are cost: Simple back of envelope calculations show it to be (a) dubious, or (b) possibly criminal (ie. standard taxpayer ripoff to cronies).
$64B - do the quick math on that. Figure a 30 year return on investment earning 4% per year:
$2.2B payback per year + operating cost of what? So somewhere around $7M per day in revenues minimum?
How many riders per day and what is average ticket price to make $7M per day?
I think you will suddenly find there are cheaper, faster, better options.
Well, a flight from SFO to LAX is $70 if you book at least a couple weeks in advance. If you assume parity for the ticket price, you need to sell an average of 100,000 tickers/day. With 100 passengers per car and 10 cars per train, you would need 100 trains/day, full, in order to make the math work.
I agree that seems pretty dubious. Why on earth is infrastructure so expensive in the US?
It's less wasteful to spend $20 billion building a pointless wall on the Mexican border than the ~$40 billion in losses this rail is going to eat. I'm glad I'm not a California resident.
The problems with all these projects are cost: Simple back of envelope calculations show it to be (a) dubious, or (b) possibly criminal (ie. standard taxpayer ripoff to cronies).
$64B - do the quick math on that. Figure a 30 year return on investment earning 4% per year:
$2.2B payback per year + operating cost of what? So somewhere around $7M per day in revenues minimum?
How many riders per day and what is average ticket price to make $7M per day?
I think you will suddenly find there are cheaper, faster, better options.