I’ll say it again: it’s high-school math to show that it is absolutely financially impossible.
$99B (just to build the tracks and stations) paid off over 30 years at 5% is a monthly payment of $526 million, i.e. $6.3 billion per year.
Divide that by the estimate (i.e. “guess” or more likely “hope”) of ridership of 37M trips per year (http://www.mercurynews.com/california-high-speed-rail/ci_19241126) and you come up with a cost of $161 per rider per one-way trip. Same-day JetBlue business class, plus taxi at each end, anybody? No, EVERYBODY, for thirty years.
Again, that doesn’t count fuel, advertising, turning on the lights in the station, or hiring anybody to run the damn thing.
Nope. My guess is they will be lucky to find 3 million riders. 10 million is pushing it. It won’t ever be financially viable.
The proponents of high speed rail have to come out with unrealistic and inflated ridership projections to make it sound plausible. But the real world numbers will come nowhere close to the projections.
No one can guarantee people will want to ride it.