Nothing Sharper

Dan Walters had a piece in today’s Bee taking the idea of high-speed rail down a notch.

Since I’d given the high-speed rail bond a bit of thought earlier, I felt compelled to submit the following to the Sac Bee editors:

Dan Walters rightly urged skepticism in his column about high speed rail, but skepticism falls flat when you don’t give honest consideration to an idea.

To start, he denigrated ridership forecasts as “rosy” without apparently looking at any data. I assume he was referring to the Proposition 1A literature, which pegged the future ridership at 70 million. A big number worthy of skepticism, yes, but cursory analysis shows that Southwest Airlines alone flies nearly half that many passengers between Northern and Southern California in one year, without even offering intermediate destinations like Bakersfield or shorter routes such as Sacramento to San Jose. In that light, 70 million sounds like a fair assessment.

And if 70 million passengers is reasonable after all, the $1.7 billion needed annually to repay the 1A bond and run the rail service would cost each ticketholder only $25. Jack the prices to $100 tickets and the service pays for itself easily, and anything higher should certainly be an enticing revenue stream for a long-sighted private investor.

Unless, that is, said investor is unreasonably skeptical.