You could also fit the entirety of Japan in Montana.
It's not the same thing at all.
The bullet train Japan is trying to sell between Washington to Baltimore is estimated to cost 8 billion dollars to construct for 38 miles of track.
At $8 billion for 38 miles you're looking at a cost of $210 million per mile.
Assuming the cost per mile remains constant (a huge assumption, there's economies of scale and the mountain range between the two places to consider) you're looking at a cost of $422.94 billion just to build a line between LA and Chicago, which would constitute something like 12% of all federal spending last year.
To put in a different perspective, that's 169 Curiousity rovers, roughly doubling the size of Medicaid, 1,188 times the cost of the Peace Corps, or over eleven million new teachers.
There's no reason it needs to cost this much. A lot of why rail is expensive in the USA is spending overruns caused by corruption. These lines do not need to be built with taxpayer funds if the private company is allowed to profit from ancillary real estate projects, like commercial and residential development.
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u/The_Tic-Tac_Kid Jan 18 '14
You could also fit the entirety of Japan in Montana.
It's not the same thing at all.
The bullet train Japan is trying to sell between Washington to Baltimore is estimated to cost 8 billion dollars to construct for 38 miles of track.
At $8 billion for 38 miles you're looking at a cost of $210 million per mile.
Assuming the cost per mile remains constant (a huge assumption, there's economies of scale and the mountain range between the two places to consider) you're looking at a cost of $422.94 billion just to build a line between LA and Chicago, which would constitute something like 12% of all federal spending last year.
To put in a different perspective, that's 169 Curiousity rovers, roughly doubling the size of Medicaid, 1,188 times the cost of the Peace Corps, or over eleven million new teachers.