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Examining Costs and Prices For California's High-Speed Rail Project
The L.A. Times features a look at the contentious issue of a publicly funded high-speed rail system for travel within the state of California, which focuses especially on an obvious question: how much would it cost for passengers to ride? This isn't a straightforward answer, though, partly because the system isn't expected to be operational for another 13 years, and the estimates vary wildly for what would be a trip of more than 400 miles that touches on some of the U.S.'s most expensive real estate. From the Times' article:
"The current $86 fare [for an L.A. to San Francisco ticket] is calculated in 2013 dollars based on a formula that prices tickets at 83% of average airline fares to help attract riders. The rail fare is an average that includes economy and premium seats, nonstop and multi-stop trains, as well as last-minute and advance purchase tickets. A premium, same-day nonstop bullet train trip would cost more than $86.
But compared with current average prices on several high-speed rail systems in Asia and Europe, $86 would be a bargain, equating to about 20 cents a mile or less, the Times review found. The analysis was based on a 438-mile route in the mid-range of what state officials expect the final alignment to measure."
How much would you be willing to pay to take a fast train between L.A. and San Francisco?
But this is Slashdot. In 13 years, we'll all be in driverless Teslas, so you'll be able to watch pr0n or post kitty pictures to Facebook for the duration of the trip.
More seriously, 'high speed rail' appears to be just a huge boondoggle to shovel money to unions. That's presumably why it's going to take so long to build; if there was real demand, no-one would want to wait thirteen years for it.
So replace one joke/scam with a yet bigger joke/scam?
I think the issue is more that the US turns HSR into a political point, so it gets mired in a nightmare of red tape.
In California, this is very true. HSR has become a litmus test. If you are a Republican, you have to adamantly oppose it. If you are a Democrat, you have to be an unqualified supporter. So both sides end up taking extreme positions, with Republicans insisting it be cancelled outright, and Democrats insisting that every extra feature gets tacked on regardless of the cost or delay. Since the Democrats have the power, expect the costs to continue to go up and up, until the voters get so fed up that they actually elect some Republicans, who will cancel it, and then we will have 400 miles of unused track slowly turning into rust.