JamesInFlorida
Senior Member
- Dec 18, 2010
- 1,501
- 186
- 48
And it would possibly do a lot of damage to the st. Louis/Chicago route for the airline, causing a loss of business and jobs.
As my wife and I were watching the new this morning this subject came up and my wife asked: "AmTrak looses money and apparently people don't use it much. Why would High Speed Rail be any different?"
your wife is dumb.
amtrak is not high-speed, and still some people use it.
right now you can take a train from st. louis to chicago - a 6 hour trip - for about $40. It cousts 6 to 7 times that to fly - but the flight only takes one hour. of course, you need to get to the airport an hour before hand for security - and you get the 'pleasure' of going through all of that so really you're saving only about 4 hours tops.
now what if the train made the trip in 3.5 hours? would avoiding airport security and saving hundreds of dollars be worth your 90 minutes? it would be for a lot of people.
As for Amtrak, the northeast corridor is the only profitable line, but that is because, well, try driving around there.
Florida may be a tourist spot around Orlando, Tampa and to a lesser extent Miami, but I don't know of many tourists who wish to go to Orlando and Miami or Tampa at the same trip. Not enough to make a rail like that profitable. And the demographics simply don't call for it either. The residents may be older but the car ownership rates are higher than many other urban spots.
I run into them all the time down here. It's not uncommon for tourists to visit both Orlando and Tampa.