Admiral Adama said:
Southwest round-trip Lovefield to Hobby $240.
Bullet train $30B / $240 = 125,000,000 round trips.
DFW and Houston metro combined populations: 15 million
Round trips per person: 8.3
For the same cost as building the bullet train we could give every single person living in the Houston and Dallas metros eight round trip flights on Southwest. What a bargain for the Texas tax payer.
While I probably shouldn't wade into this thread because I no longer live in Texas nor will this train impact me in anyway. But I feel this argument is flawed because you have not included the costs to the public to build Love Field or Hobby. While those are already sunk costs it doesn't change the fact that those airports cost tremendous amounts of money, and take up a lot of land, that should be factored into this argument, in the same way the cost of the future train ticket per person should be factored into the argument. I know in Europe when I visited 20 years ago the high speed trains were more expensive than low cost airlines. But the train ride was faster (especially when adding in times to drive to the airport, security, waiting, etc. ) but the train had more frequent travel options and was a much better way to see the country.
I feel the same when hearing people argue train service is not profitable. But yet they don't include the incredible amount of money spent to build and maintain roads and the interstate highway system. If you include these costs for highways then you could also argue driving an automobile is not "profitable".
As I said this train in Texas does not affect me and I don't have an opinion about if this train should be built or not. But I felt compelled to point out a different side of the argument.