Someone gonna make some cash. Lots of it.
Well, if they make the tracks out of Reardon Metal, it could work out.
If a private company wants to deal with it all, good for them.
As long as taxpayers aren’t on the hook for it....
“This will be a complete boondoggle “
Drive I-15 on a weekend and get back with us. In this case, virtually everyone on i-15 is going to the same place, the Strip...so one of two end-point requirements are met. It has a chance.
This is the private company constructing the rail in Florida, right?
It seems like they have a partner in the Florida govt.
But CA and NV govts are a different animal..
I can’t wait for the CA legislature to push for completion of the SF to LA high-speed rail once the LA to LV spur is complete, since people will have a destination they want to go to.
Will there be bulletproof glass between every seat row? That’s the only way I’d even consider riding that train.
This will be one places high speed rail will probably work in America.
A. It is a point A to point B route.
B. It is a relatively flat and clear of obstacles
C. High rollers will flock to it.
D. It is a private company that will build and own it. It is the same company that operates a succesful train service in Florida.
We should be supporting this kind of infrastrure development.
America hasn't had private passenger rail in over 50 years. We have become like Soviet citizens living in 1988 eastern europe who can't comprehend anything except state-run, bloated awfulness, because we've never seen anything different our whole lives.
Well, if they’re really private then good luck, but partnering with 13 unions doesn’t sound like a path to success.
People will finally be able to get the hell out of Cauliphonya a lot more quickly.
Private - am I to assume, from the headline, that this will be privately funded and not a government-controlled boondoggle? If that’s the case, then maybe somebody actually researched the viability of such a transportation venture and decided that it was viable and potentially profitable.
Las Vegas will look like east LA in about 6 months.
That would be Button Willow to Barstow.
The section of rail to nowhere in Fresno, CA, when viewed from ground level, looks like something out of the past, commonly found in a failed former Soviet Union client state, much like Uzbekistan.
With regard to this particular piece of gargantuan infrastructure, there is rarely a crew found onsite large enough to fill a pickup truck’s crew cab.
California High Speed Grifting
the Sequel.
flight time between those two cities is a tad over 90 minutes; 200 mph train will be considerably slower due to intermediate station stops and the fact that the train won’t really go 200 mph into las vegas;
next-day economy-class flight tickets range between $80-$200; one or two weeks advance purchase is even cheaper ...
one must also weigh the time and hassle of station arrival and departure, which MIGHT be a bit less hassle with a train ...
let’s say average train ticket is $100.00 round trip per person ... how many tickets will have to be sold to break even?
first, there’s the (supposed) $10 billion PLUS interest on the bonds to pay back, which would be $20 billion for a 30 year bond at 5.27% interest
then there’s operation and maintenance costs, looking about the internet, there’s numerous complicating factors, but $200,000,000/year for that line isn;’t unreasonable
so: $1.5 billion per year to pay back bonds and .2 billion per year to operate, for grand total of $1.7 billion per year
if round-trip tickets really were $100.00 then 17,000,000 tickets per year would have to be sold to break even ... that’s roughly 47,000 round-trip tickets per day, which would be a total of 94,000 one-way trips
assume 12 hours operation, then that would be 7,800 passenger trips per hour ... assume two tracks, then 3,900 trips in each direction per track per hour ... so at least 40 trains with enough cars to carry one thousand passengers each ...
(of course, none of those calculations consider peak travel periods like weekends and holidays, which only makes the calculations much worse, perhaps nearly impossible)
at any rate, does that sound economically feasible to anyone?
275 miles-—
WILL NOT survive first hard earthquake.
IS I-15 even open with all the snow???
Brightline will probably get this done. They built a great railroad in Florida. LA to Vegas makes sense. A central valley railroad does not.