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Long haul passenger Rail service can be effective but it's a niche thing nowadays. Elderly or immobile people or larger families with young children can benefit from trains vs airplanes. But your average person isn't open to paying the same price as a round trip flight for something that takes a multiple of time longer.

Per this webpage,, there are about 3.7 million passengers annually between SFO and LAX. Assuming these are all round-trip passengers, and based on Kayak etc prices of such tickets running around $150 all-in, that is $555 million in direct revenue generated from this traffic. If this rail bondoggle costs $77 billion (and I'm sure that's a lowball estimate) and assuming ALL 3.7 million passengers use the rail vs air, it would take 139 years for this thing to break even....and that is excluding interest costs.

To use a Yiddish/New York phrase, oy vey!