Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "The Surprising Success of Private Passenger Rail" video.

  1. Even the private railroad companies that initially tied together the US with steel rail required massive government financial support. In that case 100+ years ago it was the granting of rights of way that were at times miles wide which the company could lease or sell off to pay for the costs of construction and operation. All that literally free real estate combined with the pre-labor union working conditions and the then vital too-big-to-fail role that rail played in transport were all deliberate government policies to prop up "private" rail.
    1
  2. The detours into the Valley through highly-productive (i.e. unusually expensive) farmland is a big reason the CA HSR project has blown through the budget a few times over. The prudent option would have been to use the existing I-5 right of way where much of the central portion also has a generous unoccupied median, saving money for the even more expensive acquisitions in the big city termini and expanding along the CA-99 route at a later date after the whole CAHSR concept gets proven. But politicians got in the way of good choices and now the whole service is under threat of never rolling.
    1