I would think 5 people in cushy air conditioned comfort would weigh less than 2,000 lbs of freight. Your estimate of the freight a train car can carry is a bit off — a standard freight container is 40,000 lbs or about the weight equivalent of 200 passengers not 3,000. That cargo can sit on a siding, requiring coupling and uncoupling of cars and coordinating all that doesn’t sound like a savings compared to a train that is all passengers, stays coupled together all the time and loads and unloads immediately upon arrival. A single train employee for each 100 passengers might add $3 to each fare. And cargo shippers actually do care about terminals, usually involving very expensive cranes, equipment operators, truck loading docks, and warehousing costs.
So how do you get from $3 to move 2,000 lbs freight to $525 to move 5 passengers the same distance ? Somebody is planning on lining their pockets big time.
Only a government could run a railroad that way. As a boondoggle of a jobs program instead of a profitable private enterprise.
A rail car can carry a 100 tons cargo. At a 150 pounds/person, that’s over 1,300 people.
1 employee per 100 customers? Yeah, that will be attractive. Plus, I take it that doesn’t included the clean up, food beverage, admin staff. ( Well just not count these, eh?) And, no doubt being union, they’ll be a fine set of service personnel.
Anyways, you are right on this being a raid on the public purse.
So, you would get the usual construction boondoggle, , and then the thing that killed off passenger rail, unionized labor, all forever, supported by taxing others.
People spend billions, every years on mp3 players just to listen to music. Billions on greeting cards. Billions on lawn care. All because that is what they want.
People don’t freely spend billions on passenger rail travel because they don’t want it. Those people that do, are not enough, and even they will not pay high enough to meet the costs of the rail road. ( These are the people that want to tax other people, who will then have less money to buy what they want. )