39k per foot, that’s impressive!
It’s probably because the bribes are compounding at each level.
So that’s 700k * 2 trips * 365 days = 511 million rides annually. Even more if people bring passengers.
I just found it funny as a number because 35 bil is such a ridiculous amount for a 171 mile train.
The American Society of Civil Engineers annual report card reports that over 43% of our existing road system is in either poor or mediocre condition as of 2021, and an over $435 billion backlog for repairing existing roads and $125 billion for bridge repairs.[0] Worse yet, as existing infrastructure reaches its planned lifespans, we have to dump more money into repairing, extending, and replacing it.
Adding more cars only makes the existing challenges worse, and accelerates infrastructure aging due to increased wear-and-tear. Those added cars also means increased congestion, and we have decades of solid empirical evidence to show that increasing capacity through road widening only creates induced demand. You literally cannot build your way out of congestion.
The mess that defines California's HSR project is an international embarrassment. We need to fix the legal and institutional roadblocks that have helped its costs balloon and schedule disintegrate, because the alternatives are terrible.
0. https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/roads-infrastr...
Based on a model y being 187"
However, there's some big differences: this new line is going to be a 500km/h maglev line with a ~50-minute travel time, not a normal rail line like California's, and 90% of it is underground since there's a bunch of mountains in the way.
Somehow, America these days always manages to spend absurd amounts of money on infrastructure, far more than peer nations.
Another big factor is profitability: will California's system actually pay for itself? The shinkansen bullet trains in Japan are profitable, and have been for a long time. During a normal day, one train leaves Tokyo station every few minutes on the Tokaido line towards Nagoya and Osaka. So while the new maglev train looks horrifically expensive for initial costs, with the huge ridership the existing trains already have, it's a very sound investment and is sure to be profitable before too long because Japanese are used to taking trains for traveling between cities. I can't say the same for Americans, especially when this California line is taking some long, meandering route to a bunch of unimportant towns instead of just going straight from LA to SanFran like it should, which means it won't even be that fast.