There would be a market for a well run (might be inconsistent with the government proposals!) high speed train with reasonable fares on that route. From what I've read, high speed trains run from 120 to 250 mph, depending on the track and the system. San Francisco is about 350 miles from LA, so a three hour trip would be very competitive with air travel, and from my previous rail trips, far more comfortable (large comfortable seats, with plenty of room to recline, and a footrest.).
The flight itself is about an hour, but getting to the airport in LA can be a major hassle, and you waste an hour at the airport. An LA to San Diego route might be even more popular - about 125 miles, and the traffic is horrible. A 1 1/2 to 2 hour train ride to San Diego would have lots of takers. As a disclaimer, I don't know the economics of running a rail line, so whether it would be profitable or not for a private company I can't say. But I can say that if the ticket were reasonably priced, they would have lots of customers.
“I don’t know the economics of running a rail line, so whether it would be profitable or not for a private company I can’t say. But I can say that if the ticket were reasonably priced, they would have lots of customers. “
I have driven LA to SF many, many, times. It is dull drive with tons of traffic. It is a lot of work to drive that.
And yes, I would agree, that there would be lots of customers, but how many are needed to break even...let’s take a stab: The cost being bandied around is $20B. If you figure that you’ll need to recover, maybe, 10% of that per year, you need $2B at the farebox (and that $2B would probably be enough to cover ops, as well as debt service). So the question is whether you can get $2B per year, or about $5M per day, in farebox revenues.
So, Southwest charges $64 one-way for advance purchases from LAX to SFO, which comes out $75 with tax.
For that price - you would need 65,000 passengers per day. If a train holds 500 people, then you need 260 trains per day...or about one train running every 8 minutes (for a 16-hour schedule). That is a LOT of people
To give you some scale - LAX averages about 80,000 passengers per day. So you would have to carry more people per day than LAX services (for all of their destinations).
The numbers simply do not work.