Nashville, TN. Hey!! Paging Nashville Tennessee! Transit vote is tomorrow! Read this! Get a clue!!
I could see two paths being able to financially make it and turn a profit. New York to Washington. New York to Chicago. Beyond them, there’s zero chance that any of these will ever pay back what it costs to build and run it.
But, but...it’s shiny! And, global warming!
“As for the “high speed” aspect of the train, the Authority now admits that the two-hour-and-40-minute travel time that helped sell the initial bonding of the train in 2008 will now slip to, at best, three hours and 30 minutes. Travel time on some runs will be up to five hours.”
Well, currently, Amtrak from Oakland to Downtown Los Angeles is about 12 hours, but if you take Amtrak’s “bus bridge,” it’s only 6 or 7. So here you have a subsidized railroad offering “bus service” to cut a trip’s time in half. But the current section of CA’s “high-speed rail” really does make sense, because our illegal Mexican farm workers will eventually be able to “speed up and down the Central Valley” moving from crop to crop to pick them!
Even in China, where labor costs are low and land is seized at will, HSR is a wasteful political boondoggle:
Daniel Albalate, a professor in the department of economic policy at the University of Barcelona and co-author of The Economics and Politics of High Speed Rail (Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 2013), acknowledges that the HSR network is increasing at an impressive rate in China. He also notes its accessibility issues. There is a pronounced difference in fares: HSR fares usually cost between seven and 10 cents per kilometre per person in China, compared to two or three cents for traditional intercity rail.
“HSR prices are much higher than prior prices of railway services and we know that the arrival of HSR is usually linked to the dismantling of conventional lines,” Albalate argues. “Those users that today are not willing to pay the new price are now worse off travelling by bus.”
She's dead, Jim.
But the Democrat crooks get rich.
Think of the money that could be used to help the illegal alien invasion instead!!
Fleets of pay-per-use self-driving cars will decimate what is left of the passenger train industry.
California is going to need that money for all the Hondurans arriving.
Slow Death of the Train to Nowhere
Not exactly nowhere, but close.
The HSR always seems to pass through the state capital?
Here in Illinois, they have been clamoring For Chiraq to Springfield HSR.
No money to maintain local roads or public transportation, but HSR!!!
I don’t remember the exact original figure now, but I could have sworn it was much less than $32 billion dollars when the voters were asked to approve this idiotic plan. For some reason $11 billion comes to mind.
They thought they’d sucker the populace to go for it, then reveal the true cost later on.
I was having none of it, but folks once again suckered for a Leftist pack of lies.
hey Moonbeam - shut it down and use the money for something the people want.
Wonder if the Central Valley segment under construction is adjacent to land owned by Mr. Diane Feinstein?
Bakersfield to San Jose starting work in 2029! Isn’t that most of the route?
HSR works well in highly populated Europe, China and Japan where ridership and moderate distances between cities makes it work.
We don’t have that kind of configuration in the US and HSR is a huge waste of money. Long distance travel needs are better served by air.
Any distance more than two hours travel time by car, you’ll be taking a plane anyway to get there. The train is old-fashioned Nineteenth Century technology and even liberals can’t make it go faster.
What can we do so it will die faster??? Hire a Kennedy to transport it? Have the train work for a Clinton?