Feb 3, 2023
Well, it's big in Japan... That is what proponents of California's high speed rail project say when asked about the whys and wherefores of the system. In other words, if it works somewhere else it will work here. That argument, though, falls in the face of a rather basic fact: California and Japan are different. It is true that Japan's high speed rail system, first begun in 1964, actually makes money - a lot, in fact. The iconic first line, Shinkansen Tokaido, alone carries 90 million people a year and has an operating profit of about $4.4 billion dollars. That does not include capital costs, but teasing that number out after 60 years of operation and the privatization of the route in the late 1980s is extremely difficult - suffice to say the deal has "worked" for the owners. There are multiple other Shinkansen lines in Japan, most of which also realize an operating profit (the latest expansion to Hokkaido - the very large island north of the Japanese mainland -
