Let’s see: LA to NY by air $200 and 6 hours. by “high speed” train (not including the $2 trillion subsidy) $800 and 2 days. Including subsidy and something like current riders (30 million), that would be $68,800 and 2 days. Looks like a trillion dollars STILL is a huge amount of money.
I think I figured it out. The reason these insane LIBs’ brains don’t explode is that they don’t have any brains. This Twu subhuman is obviously mentally disturbed. His ideas aren’t ideas...they are disjointed ramblings of a pathetically unstable moron.
Right, even high speed trains aren’t competitive with air travel on long-haul flights. The question is whether high speed trains are competitive with air travel on short haul flights?
I don’t know the answer to this, but it’s a question that is worth asking. Chicago to New York in 4 hours or so is pretty competitive (in my view) with airline service, particularly if I can arrive at Penn Station as opposed to landing in Long Island or New Jersey and having to take a car into the city.
I can fly Boston to New York a lot faster than I can take the Acela. But on the Acela, the seats are a lot more comfortable, I can spread out at a table, I can bring a computer, I can do work, and the train stops in the city. That’s pretty good.
The question is not the initial cost—which, as the author indicates, is relatively trivial over a long period of years—but the ongoing costs of maintenance and service. Would a ticket on my Chicago-NY train be $250 or $1000? All of that makes a pretty big difference, I think.
no one would ride them once a terrorist blows up a rail