Quote:
Originally Posted by electricron
Yes, that's $28 billion of deferred maintenance sneaking up on them.
|
That is the cost of the full replacement of many major 100+ year-old bridges and tunnels along the route, none of which are in critical states of disrepair. Also, many of them are used by other railroad operations like MARC, Metro North, NJ Transit, and freight, so Amtrak should not be expected to bear the full cost.
A true HSR line only carries HSR passenger traffic. The TGV in France has a post office train but that is being phased out if it isn't gone already. Other HSR lines around the world might carry light freight of that kind as well, but overwhelmingly, the primary use of a HSR rail line is intercity HSR trains. That's not what the Northeast Corridor is, and it's a big argument against building true HSR in the Northeast, aside from the fact that the quality of the service is already very good and very competitive with jet travel so improving it to world-class modern HSR won't attract many new riders.
California's situation is a totally different situation.