Posted on 04/30/2018 10:06:18 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
hey Moonbeam - shut it down and use the money for something the people want.
Ridership, for instance, is projected between (cough-cough) 25 and 95 million peeps per year. If ever built (it won't) ridership could never, ever reach 1/100th of the lower estimate. Consider the following realities...
1. Few people live/work near both stations, meaning taxi or car rental at one or both ends of the trip. High speed? Ha!
2. It is reasonable to anticipate TSA or similar security, meaning arrive early at the station. Hi speed? Ha!
3. Since the choo choo could never, ever be remotely self-sustaining, ticket prices will cost more than airline tickets, unless the state underwrites most of the fair. Pay for itself? Never!
4. I used to live in the once-golden-state, and I have many friends and acquaintances of the liberal persuasion. None of them, zero, has ever said that they were looking forward to riding the train. (Who would pay more to spend more time in travel to likely inconvenient locations?)
This train is really intended to fleece the astonishingly gullible voters who don't seem to mind that the only stops it will make are in Graftville and Frauduland; and, the project should actually be re-named...
The FAST SHUFFLE.
Wonder if the Central Valley segment under construction is adjacent to land owned by Mr. Diane Feinstein?
Bakersfield to San Jose starting work in 2029! Isn’t that most of the route?
You see bits and pieces of construction of this high speed rail alongside the freeway, nothing connected, farmland cut in half, and millions and millions more in costs than predicted, etc. What an EXPENSIVE disaster. However, we vote in a new Governor in November. Maybe we’ll get relief from this boondoggle, but not hopeful, as Gov. Brown is one of a long line of miserable Governors in California.
They should take half the money and give it to me.
I will do nothing with it—promise—and they will have saved half their money!
The empty trains could become new toilets for the homeless—winning!
HSR works well in highly populated Europe, China and Japan where ridership and moderate distances between cities makes it work.
We don’t have that kind of configuration in the US and HSR is a huge waste of money. Long distance travel needs are better served by air.
Any distance more than two hours travel time by car, you’ll be taking a plane anyway to get there. The train is old-fashioned Nineteenth Century technology and even liberals can’t make it go faster.
Yep, in Europe, I’d much rather take a train, even if taking a plane is cheaper and quicker.
At least with a train, the security is less demanding, a quick scan of luggage before you get on your train, you can relax, and generally you arrive in the city center, where it’s only a quick cab ride to your hotel.
In their sycophantic desire to ape Western Europe in all things, US Leftists never did acknowledge that American cities are simply built differently than European cities. American cities have open space and are designed with the car in mind. With very few exceptions, public transport sucks. The climate in the US is also far more extreme both being far hotter/more humid than Europe as well as far colder in places. You really don’t want to be outside walking around and carrying bags in the South in July or in Minneapolis from January til May for example.
So what the hell are you going to do when you reach the outskirts of Dallas on high speed rail? Walk? LOL, no. Take the bus which is infrequent, inconvenient and often full of riff raff? People will fly in and rent a car or drive instead of that every time. That goes for just about every other city in America too.
“The FAST SHUFFLE.”
Very good. I will now use that to describe the Central Florida Boondoggle called “SUNRAIL.” When presented to the folks of FL, most asked “why?” But the politicians told us that “the money has already been allocated and you have to take it. That’s $750,000,000 or 750 million! The cars are made elsewhere, the locomotives, elsewhere. Very little of the money was spent in Florida. It uses existing tracks and runs Mon. thru Fri. Ridership was questioned and the old “build it and they will come,” was the answer. When asked about the discount fares for juniors and seniors and how could the system make money, the answer was, “this is the government, we are not in business to make money.” Translation: You are in it by yourself and you, the taxpayer, will make up the shortfall.
California will soon ask for a bailout...time for them to be cut loose and floated toward Hawaii. I hope that Florida won’t get lopped off and sent toward Cuba or Venezuela.
What, discontinue the Brown Streak?
Unless of course you find yourself on the 1517 to Paris . . .
What can we do so it will die faster??? Hire a Kennedy to transport it? Have the train work for a Clinton?
did the math elsewhere....if you ditched the rail project and the State of California gave a 100% subsidy on round-trip airfare from SAN Fran to LAX it would STILL be cheaper.
“New York to Chicago”
Why would anyone take a “high speed” train that would take 3-6 times longer than flying, and cost more (unless heavily subsidized)? It would certainly never be enough people to make a profit.
No, but our congressman Jim Costa promised Obama his vote for Obama care in return for federal stimulus money.
Per this webpage,, there are about 3.7 million passengers annually between SFO and LAX. Assuming these are all round-trip passengers, and based on Kayak etc prices of such tickets running around $150 all-in, that is $555 million in direct revenue generated from this traffic. If this rail bondoggle costs $77 billion (and I'm sure that's a lowball estimate) and assuming ALL 3.7 million passengers use the rail vs air, it would take 139 years for this thing to break even....and that is excluding interest costs.
To use a Yiddish/New York phrase, oy vey!
Excellent stat. I love it. Thanks.
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