Quote:
Originally Posted by Combwork
It's not just building cost, it's running cost. Once built, assuming both are well maintained I would guess the overall cost for new rail would be lower than new road.
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To whom? Roads are already paid for by excise taxes on motor fuels. Trains, OTOH, are just a money pit for public subsidies.
One of the big problems with passenger rail in the US is the sprawling nature of our cities. If you live in a typical suburb of a big American city, you may well be an hour or more from the rail station and the rail station where you're headed may be an hour from your ultimate destination - and there may not be good public transport connecting the rail stations to anything else.
High speed rail in the US is a big, costly solution looking for a problem. If we want to spend money on rail, why not build world-class light rail/subways in our major cities? There are only a handful of big cities in this country that have light rail/subways that compete in terms of quality and coverage with major cities in other parts of the industrialized world. Even DC, with its Metro, doesn't yet have train service to its major gateway airport (Dulles). This is true of most major airports in the country.
We need to learn to walk before we run.