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[KevinKorell]

From Metro Magazine, 11/11/08:

California’s new high-speed train system will generate more than $1 billion in surplus revenues a year by 2030, reducing congestion and pollution and returning nearly three times as much in value as the system will cost over the next 40 years, according to a new business plan released by the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA).

This story is here.

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I'm all for high speed rail and voted for it; but what are these guys smoking? 450,000 jobs for a single passenger rail line? That's gotta dwarf Amtrak's current national payroll. (Look below, it's 25X!) 55 million passengers a year? That's 150k a day! At what, 100 pax per car? That's 1500 cars. A consist of 10 cars and you'd have 75 trains each way, each day. Totally full. 19 minutes apart around the clock to fit that in. Good frequency, but probably not safe at those speeds. 2.4 billion in revenue would make the fare reasonable at $43 The stations would be far, far more busy than Amtrak's New York at only 8 mill pax/year. I just don't see any of that happening. OK, I looked at Amtrak 19k employees, $2.15 bill revenue They probably paid a lot of money to consultants and board members and made power point presentations and pie charts and everything. But some random guy in a cubicle just debunked all that work in five minutes, spending only a few electrons.