Daily flights from LA to Vegas cost $100, for round trip. For the high speed rail to work, the r/t ticket has to be less than that. It simply won’t be that cheap.
High speed trains from Burbank and Ontario to Barstow. Barstow to Vegas. Drinks and gambling on board. Room tax in vegas to fund. Then self paying trains based on gambling revenue. If you see the parking pot from barstow to Ontario on weekends, there is your ridership. In SD i can see cars headed up the 15 starting on Friday afternoons and the line goes all the way to LV.
Southwest Airlines has daily flights from about 6 airports in Southern California to several airports in Northern California. Even if you don’t own a car you can get to any of those airports using public transportation.
What’s wrong with regular rail?
At the rate we're going, it won't be long before it'll cost that much to drive round trip from Haymarket into DC on I-66.
Indeed. I just compared the Acela prices from Washington, DC to Boston--$531 for the dates I selected, round trip--and plane tickets for the same, which range from $115 to $321 for non-stop flights. And the flights are much faster, 1h35m each way.
I like trains just fine, but this high-speed rail project is fraught with problems no matter how one looks at it.
One issue I never see brought up by the supposedly environmentally aware is that a high speed train will be devastating to wildlife. If normal freeways with speeds of 60-80 mph are responsible for so many thousands of wildlife deaths, how many more wild animals are going to be killed by trains barreling through at speeds above 100 mph? But I guess wild animal lives don't matter when it's "for the environment." After all, the bird carnage caused by "environmentally friendly" windmills don't seem to faze these people at all.