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To: SaveFerris

If they ever get it built.

$77 billion? You could rebuild CA’s freeways or upgrade its airports and still have plenty of money left over.

When you let government manage an important project it never gets done on budget and on time.

Certainly not by 2033.


19 posted on 05/04/2018 4:35:55 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: goldstategop; SaveFerris; Dr. Bogus Pachysandra
As I wrote elsewhere, 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. However, 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 current airline passengers use the rail vs air (a HUGE assumption), it would take 139 years for this thing to break even....and that is excluding interest costs.

To be fair, California doesn't hold a monopoly on statists running the government. Indeed, MA and HI were the only states in the union where Hillary won ALL counties...at least Trump won a few in CA.

That said, to use a Yiddish/New York phrase, oy vey!

36 posted on 05/04/2018 6:16:54 PM PDT by DoodleBob
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