Replies

Japan and France have both spent about as much on high-speed rail as they have on their intercity freeway systems, yet the average residents of those countries travel by car 10 to 20 times as much as they travel by high-speed rail. They also fly domestically more than they take high-speed rail.

Mr. O'Toole is wildly off if he thinks that 20 times as Japanese travel intercity via car than via rail. In fact, I would dare say that he has never traveled intercity in Japan. There are only 450 national non-expressway highways in a nation of 120+ million people (with nine more currently under construction). The average length of a national highway is only 81 miles.

Japan also has 5,400 miles of national expressways; however, these have been quite expensive to use --- toll charges are based on distances, and until recently, averaged about 40 cents per mile for a standard passenger car. (Tolls are coming down, both because some of the most important highways have already recouped their construction costs, and it is politically popular to lower these tolls especially since the excess moneys generated were going straight into the general revenue.)

Furthermore, in Hokkaido and other places in Japan that get heavy snowfall, train travel during the winter is far more convenient than trying to drive. Hokkaido alone makes up about 30% of Japan's land surface. (It is true that there are towns in Hokkaido that are accessible only by road, having no rail or airport, but winter travel among these towns is a vanishingly small percentage of all travel in Hokkaido. It is also true that driving all over Hokkaido is quite popular in the summer months with tourists.)

If you count traffic in the Kanto megalopolis as "intercity" when traveling between, say, Setagaya and Bunkyo, then you might be able to bloat the "intercity" travel figures for automobiles quite a bit. If there is a source for Mr. O'Toole's Japanese numbers (he doesn't cite one), then my guess is that it must include such bloat.

Going to Mr. O'Toole's point about air travel versus rail, in Japan, if the rail travel time between two Japanese cities is less than 3 hours, then as a strong general rule rail proves to be the winner. If rail travel time between two cities much exceeds 4 hours, then air travel between those cities does win hands-down.

All one has to do to see what a scam and waste of money high speed rail will be is to go to the California High Speed Rail Authority website.
According to their projections 88 to 117 million people will ride the trains each year. Given that this is advertised to be a self supporting agency we can figure that the break even number is somewhere around 102.5 million riders a year. This means that 28082 people will be riding the trains each and every day, 365 days a year. And this number of people are traveling between 25 locations within the state, and the majority are traveling between LA and San Francisco which is the longest of the routes.
I for one do not believe that are enough politicians, lobbyists, union bosses or gay men in the state to support the operation and have it profitable.
And if you a familiar with California, you will see that the High Speed Rail Board is a bunch of freeloaders getting political payoffs at taxpayer expense.
High Speed rail was first studied in the 1960s by the Federal Government and the study reached the conclusion that it would never be profitable in the USA. In the 1980s and 1990s the Casino owners in Las Vegas were studying a joint venture to run high speed trains from LA to Vegas and that study found that it would be a loser.

Going to Mr. O’Toole’s point about air travel versus rail, in Japan, if the rail travel time between two Japanese cities is less than 3 hours, then as a strong general rule rail proves to be the winner. If rail travel time between two cities much exceeds 4 hours, then air travel between those cities does win hands-down.

Good analysis and all true.

But “rail time” never includes: getting to the station, carrying your own bags up and down and around the gd station, train dangers such as kids and drunks falling off the platform or even jumping off the platform,

taxi ride or long walk sluggin’ bags to the station, taxi on arrival, taxi after job is done to go for a bit of sight seeing or dinner, or back to station, parking fees at the station if needed, and reversing all of the above to return home.

In the USA and in Japan, even if gas is $5 or even $10 a gallon, it is nearly ALWAYS cheaper to go by car than train, and faster, and more convenient, and relaxing, when the above is include-— i.e. my car is parked outside my door, my train is not.

I cannot afford to go anywhere on the train with my 3 kids and would suffer a heart attack carrying the bags if I did.

Previous example offered was LA to San Diego, by car or train.

Car $25.

Train: $250

New World Order dudes like to pack us all into easily controlled high rises and on to easily watched over mass transit;

gimme my freedom and a car, or even a bicycle.