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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (705998)	3/26/2013 6:54:32 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578372

There are nearly 8 million people in the SF Bay Area and 18 million in the greater LA area. Population 7.15 million en.wikipedia.org That's just SFO.........that's why I said the SF Bay Area...........by the time hi speed rail is running, it will be well over 8 million: this larger CSA* contains 7.46 million people—the sixth-largest CSA in the U.S.* Population - 12,828,837 en.wikipedia.org When discussing the market for transportation, you don't just consider the SMSA. You look at the CSA which is what are the numbers you used for Tokyo and Osaka: the Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA Combined Statistical Area (CSA), more commonly known as the Greater Los Angeles Area, with an estimated population of 17,786,419 By the time, hi speed rail is in place that figure will be pushing 19 million. The Japanese metro areas have over 70 percent more people in them (and a lot more people in between, that area is the heart of Japan's population, and Japan has over three times as many people as CA in slightly less area). So what? The CA hi speed rail won't run as frequently as the bullet trains. Its called scheduling based on demand. Big deal. And we have much cheaper gasoline. And they also have bad traffic, and probably higher tolls. And the Japanese line's construction started in 1959 when costs where lower (in real, not just nominal terms). Also the Japanese cities are slightly closer (the difference isn't huge, something like 70 miles, but the further the cities are the more aircraft beat out HSR). The traffic between SF and LA is horrendous. Still if any area was going to work for HSR in the US, LA to San Francisco would be one of them (the other possibilities would be the North East Corridor, and maybe connecting the big cities in Texas). But its far from a slam dunk that would be cost effective. More like a very small possibility. Its nearly certain to be a big money loser (unlike Tokyo-Osaka which makes money), but there is some small chance the losses could just be large, rather than enormous, and if that happens someone might be able to spin it in to some sort of success. Maybe if the line is fanatical about cutting construction and operating costs, it could actually become reasonable at some point, but construction in CA usually isn't cheap. You don't have much vision or imagination, do you?