There are not earthquakes in Brazil and the length should be around 500km. It seems like a better candidate than SF-LA.
just saying,
Sure there will be private contractors but is there really any private interest in building and/or operating high speed rail in CA? Perhaps Hyperloop will change things but so far it has been government led and financed.
More potential passengers in the latter, more potential passenger revenue in the former.
> Brazilians may be poorer today but they are catching up fast.
Per capita GDP in Brazil is less than 1/3 of that in California, and is increasing at about 1.7%/annum (2.7% GDP growth, 0.9% population growth); assuming no growth in California GDP per capita, it would take Brazil more than 65 years to catch up.
It's probably moot comparison anyway as best I can tell the Brazil HSR is not going to happen. There have even been giant protests over transportation and government spending.
I'm also pretty skeptical that CA HSR will actually get built - numbers don't add up and popularity is declining. If they can build and operate the Bakersfield to Fresno segment on schedule and budget it might have a chance - but I have doubts they can even do this.
São Paulo - Rio is actually the 3rd most busy airplane route in the world. With over 7.7M passengers in 2012. [1]
[1] http://www.amadeus.com/web/amadeus/en_US-US/Amadeus-Home/New...