Originally Posted by
kebosabi
A prime example using my home airport would be the SAN-LAX or SBA-LAX. If there was a high-speed rail linking SAN, SBA and LAX, they wouldn't need to rely on such feeder routes. I'm sure the same would hold true for the Texas Triangle and AUS-DFW.
Wishful thinking yes. But we are close to the tipping point.
It might work in Southern California because of the population density along that corridor, but I'm less convinced about Texas. That triangle, assuming you take in San Antonio, is around 700-800 miles as the crow flies. Lets assume you'll need 800, and the French are spending about $20 million per mile on the TGV and rolling stock. It might be a little cheaper in Texas because you have less communities to disturb and need to build less tunnels, but it's still a $15 billion project.
How many people are going to use it? IIRC there are about 3,000 people a day flying AUS-DAL/DFW, and presumably similar amounts IAH/HOU-DAL/DFW
& SAT-DAL/DFW so we're talking about 10,000 passengers a day.
My back of an envelope calculation suggests each passenger will therefore have to pay $400-500 per round trip just to recover the cost of the project & interest. plus of course current labor and energy costs to run it, so the total cost is headed towards a $1,000 round trip compared with airline costs in the $100-200 range.
Overall my sense is the cost of construction is too high and/or the number of passengers too low to make this viable any time soon.