High-Speed Scam

Robert Samuelson reports:

Suburbanization after World War II made most rail travel impractical. From 1950 to 2000, the share of the metropolitan population living in central cities fell from 56 percent to 32 percent, report UCLA economists Leah Platt Boustan and Allison Shertzer in a new study. Jobs moved too. Trip origins and destinations are too dispersed to support most rail service.

Only in places (Europe, Asia) with greater population densities is high-speed rail potentially attractive. Even there, most of the existing high-speed trains don't earn "enough revenue to cover both their construction and operating costs," the Congressional Research Service report said. The major exceptions seem to be the Tokyo-Osaka and Paris-Lyon lines.

An article well worth your time.