Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
The distance between Beijing and Shanghai is roughly the same as the distance between Chicago and NY. I'll let you guess why I would mention that.
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Beijing to Shangai is 811 rail miles, and the fastest one stop, at Nanjing South, trains take 4.5 hours to travel that far, averaging 181 mph.
China spent $32 Billion to build it, the initial projections was as low as $16 Billion, a year later projections rose to $25 Billion. So even in China they experience a doubling of the costs to build, where all the land is owned by the government and there are no property taxes to pay, and costs of labor are significantly lower than in Europe or America.
The good news to report is that they report a profit of $1 Billion a year, with 165,000 passengers daily, which is 25% lower than the projected 220,000 daily passengers. 80,000 daily passengers still take the old slow trains between these two cities, so not everyone is willing to pay extra for the faster service.
FYI, 165,000 passengers x 365 days = 60.225 million passengers each year on this one HSR line. That's twice what Amtrak gets nationally.
I do not foresee Amtrak being able to run the 959 rail miles between New York City and Chicago with just one station stop. If it is going to cost CHSR between $63.2 billion and $98.1 Billion to build a 525 rail miles HSR line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, what do you think it would cost to build a HSR between New York City and Chicago? Twice as much as CHSR because it is twice as far? That could be six times more than China's $32 Billion between Beijing and Shanghai, potentially as much as $196 Billion. Would anyone believe any dollar figure Amtrak or anybody else would suggest?
All the $$$$ amounts written in this response was found at Wiki for CHSR and Beijing to Shanghai HSR or calculated from them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Califo...igh-Speed_Rail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijin...-speed_railway