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I feel that when the total cost of rail is taken into account, there are only a few very high density areas or high traffic routes where they make sense. I was
by TheMagicHorsey 5y ago
I feel that when the total cost of rail is taken into account, there are only a few very high density areas or high traffic routes where they make sense. I was recently reading about how large stretches of China's bullet train system cost tens of billions of dollars, and ongoing expenditure of billions more, and have hardly enough traffic to justify their maintenance, let alone their construction costs. There are some routes that are well utilized, but it seems that when you empower the government to make such infrastructure, there is massive malinvestment ... and its hard to know what the alternative could have been without such centralized planning.
- larschdk 5y agoAgree. Trains make perfect sense in metro areas like London, Berlin, Paris, Frankfurt, etc. Everywhere else, they are a complete waste of money, are difficult to run on a regular schedule, service only narrow corridors, are inconvenient to get to/from for daily commutes and increase total commute time 2+ times. To increase use of public transport, we need to increase convenience, not reduce cost.
- fomine3 5y agoTrain's bonus over driving a car is that I have no chance to kill/break anyone/anything. IMO people should think driving a car is a special operation that have high risk in daily basis.
- tonmoy 5y agoYou can’t just look at the income from fare and use that to justify the construction cost. The train may have brought development and investment into the area that wouldn’t have happened otherwise earning tax for the government in other ways. Highways/interstates in the US would have been an infinite percentage of loss with your original assumption since they don’t produce anything directly.