The project's expected costs are $77 billion.
The SFO-LAX air route produced 3.66 million passengers in 2015. Let's be generous and round up to 4MM.
LAX-SFO Round-trip airfare runs about $225, and let's assume all 4MM passengers were round-trips.
This, the total ticket revenue produced by the LAX-SFO route is $225*(4MM /2) =$411,750,000.
Assuming every person flying today takes the train (an extremely aggressive assumption), it will take 77bln/411.75MM = 187 years to break even on this boondoggle.
I'm no fan of govt largess, but at this rate, it'd be cheaper for the state of CA to pay for everyone's flight and deep-six the project.
That wasn’t fun…at all! }:-(
;-)
“I’m no fan of govt largess, but at this rate, it’d be cheaper for the state of CA to pay for everyone’s flight and deep-six the project. “
Well, back during the Vietnam War it was estimated that it would have been cheaper to build each Vietcong soldier a $350,000 home.