I think geographically small countries with ethnically homogenous populations and a high degree of population density are a lot more likely to make these sorts of investments than large, widely spread, diverse countries.
I love high-speed rail, and in the abstract I wish it were available here, but it’s pretty easy to understand why it ain’t.
The National Transit Database provides costs and passenger miles for transit. As I explained in a previous post, the data are not terribly easy to read, as operating costs, capital costs, fare, and passenger miles are all in separate files. So I’ve gathered them all into one spreadsheet for you.
According to cells Q1371 through S1378 of this spreadsheet, average capital and operating costs per passenger mile are:
Mode Capital Operating
Bus 0.14 0.78
Trolley bus 0.48 1.13
Light rail 1.46 0.57
Heavy rail 0.24 0.36
Commuter rail 0.26 0.39
Demand response 0.25 3.09
Other 0.31 0.45
Total/Average 0.25 0.59
It is appropriate to point out that the capital costs in any given year are not attributable to the passenger miles carried in that year but should be spread out over roughly 30 years worth of passenger miles. On the other hand, in the long run agencies will need to sustain a continuous investment in capital costs, so the costs for some modes such as buses are probably pretty close to the long-run costs per passenger mile.
In the above table, the costs for trolley buses and light rail are a little high, reflecting heavy investments currently being made in those two modes, but the rest are probably about right. Since light rail and trolley buses are a relatively small portion of total transit travel, the overall average of 25 cents a passenger mile is also roughly correct.
So transit costs 84 cents per passenger mile, nearly four times the cost of driving. Transit fares average 20.4 cents per passenger mile (interesting how the transit industry keeps fares close to the actual cost of driving), so the subsidies are nearly 64 cents per mile.