FuturePundit: High Speed Rail Rarely Turns A Profit

Update: Contrary to popular impressions mass transit plays a small role in moving people around Europe. See this page at Figure 1: Motorised Travel (passenger-kms per capita per annum) in 2003 where it compares many European countries for public transport use. Then scroll down in that same document and look at percentage contributions to moving people around in Europe in "Figure 3: Overall mode share of distance travelled (%) in 2003". After all the mass transit subsidies and high taxes on gasoline well over 80% of passenger miles traveled on the ground in Europe still are done by car. The convenience of cars wins out.