/sarcasm>
Dolt.
Hmmm. Is CapMetro running it?
If they can't make it profitable in places where train ridership looks like this, then they can never make it work in places like the US where train ridership is virtually non-existent
If Americans aren't big on high speed rails, so be it. But the Chinese are going to forge ahead to eventually have more high speed rails than the rest of the world combined. And if it fits them, so be it.
Cancel the space shuttle and returning to the moon because it has been done.
But let's build faster trains.
Wonder what a chinee 200+ MPH train wreck is gonna look like?
“As a result, Amtrak receives the highest per-passenger federal subsidy of any mode: $237.53 per 1,000 passenger-miles compared to $4.23 per 1,000 passenger-miles for commercial aviation.”
That’s the money quote.
Economics is at the crux of understanding why so many things with government should not be done, by government. If it’s less efficient in economic terms then it cannot be justified as a legitimate cost to be extracted by law from the pockets of taxpayers.
And, contrary to what’s often presented by passenger train advocates. the crux of the economics of the quote is in it’s use of a subsidy rate per a number of passenger miles. Rail advocates often want to quote simply the total whole dollar statistics on “transportation subsidies”, ignoring the much greater volume of passenger miles both airplanes and buses achieve. So, even when the whole dollar amount of subsidies for rail is less, in almost every case it is more on an annual passenger-miles basis.
Another one nailed by Sarah Barracuda: Bullet trains to bankruptcy.
Train experts have told me that if we do want to spend a bunch of money improving railroads, it should all go into separating existing freight trackage from streets and highways. This would enable faster freight, which is what would really improve our competitiveness with the rest of the world.