If California was willing to destroy its agriculture industry because they were told it would endanger a 2 inch fish, imagine what its going to take to implement high speed trains in that state.
The only aspect of this train that will ultimately be successful will be that which leads out of California.
(Hint: the answer is zero.)
The US government had to require, by legislation, the continuation of passenger rail just to get the mail delivered in the 1930's. Freight has paid for itself, and supported passenger service for 100 years.
The math on this is ridiculous from every perspective.
They are counting on 40 million boarders ? That is 110,000 people taking a high-speed train per day every day of the year. Do that many people really need to travel between San Diego, LA, San Fran, Sacramento ? Daily ?
They are saying they need to charge $105 per fare. Why ? The freight company CSX moves a ton of freight 400 miles by rail for a few dollars according to their commercials.
They need $4B per year to meet operating costs ? That seems like an awful lot.
highspeed rail through earthquake country is about the dumbest thing I can think of to waste more money
Here’s a perfect example of something that’s just too expensive to implement.
If it’s $42B for the first 520 miles of an 800 mile system, let’s go ahead and double it to $85B. We know the final price would be higher. And that’s just to build the thing.
Now to borrowing costs. Let’s pretend that there are people or institutions who would buy 30-year CA bonds in the first place. But we can’t pretend as well that they’ll go along with a couple of percent interest. Let’s say the bonds pay eight percent.
Just doing the simple math of $85B at 8% instead of working int out with a loan calculation program gives $6.8B per year in interest needing to be paid. Divide that by the article’s ridership figure of 60M people per year to get a fare of $113 per person as an absolute minimum just to pay the bond interest for what they built.
Oops, excuse me, according to the article, a fare of $105 drops ridership by 1/3, from 60M to 40M, moving that bond-interest-per-ride figure from $113 to $170, which by the same economic reasoning would cut ridership some more, etc. We’re looking at $200 per ticket to break even on interest payments alone.
I leave it to others more familiar with the day to day costs of running a business to offer suggestions as to how much more needs to be added to that $113 fare for the expenses of running the railroad itself — fuel, salaries, advertisements, etc.
NFW can this thing be anything but a complete money pit.
Make the politicians pay when the costs soar!
If we required politicians to post a personal guarantee bond, payable to charity, if the costs of projects they supported soared, I bet these boondoggles would never be approved.
The some are correct.
Some Fear California’s High-Speed Rail Won’t Deliver On Early Promises,
Most Conservatives Know California’s High-Speed Rail Won’t Deliver On Early Promises.
JR West Nozomi 500 train passing station at 300 km/h
This is a YouTube video of a JR West Nozomi 500 train passing a train station at 300 km/h (186 mph). Now imagine this at an even higher speed--the 220 mph maximum that the proposed California High-Speed Rail system will use. The noise level would be so intense that unless the State of California is willing to pay to sound-insulate every building within 150 feet of the tracks (like JNR did before they split into JR East and JR West!), high-speed rail is a non-starter.
Even if they use the freeways and put the thing in the middle it to reduce right of way costs. Its still going to ccst more than the allocated ammount. Instead of doing all of this here is what a true socialist would have done;
http://www.theusmat.com/natldesksatire.htm. Order traffic guards 24/7 throughout the US at all RR crossings...
As I sat in my car at an LA intersection, I looked over to the east and saw a huge train going by;
10 or 15 passenger cars in the train;
2 or 3 human heads sticking up in the windows.
Daily loss of ....???????????
What is it with Liberals and choo choo trains?
Their Euro envy is not enough to explain it.
Not enough toys as kids or what?
Cheers,
knewshound