Tyler Cowen has some smart commentary on another set of dubious HSR claims. One of the helpful commenters “kurt9″ offered this info on Japan’s HSR. This caught my eye because I am searching for solid facts on any truly profitable HSR links anywhere in the world. If this is correct only one of Japan’s HSR links is profitable (no source given), so this is unverified info:
There are 5 shinkansen lines in Japan:
Tokaido-sen – Tokyo to Osaka
Sanyo-sen – Osaka to Fukuoka
Joshinetsu – Tokyo to Nigata (to the Japan Sea side)
Tohoku-sen – Tokyo to up north towards Hokkaido
Hokuritsu-sen – Along the Japan Sea side from Nigata down through Komatsu (Ishikawa-ken) to Nagoya
Of these shinkansen lines, only the Tokaido-sen is profitable. The others are subsidized by the national government. Having ridden it many times, I can tell you why the Tokaido-sen is profitable. A train runs every 3-5 minutes from 8AM until 5PM every work day and everyone of these trains are full up. Each train has 15 carriages, with each carriage with the seating capacity of a 737. That is, each train carries the equivalent of 3 747′s worth of passengers, every 3 to 5 minutes.
Outside the NYC to Washington DC corridor, there is no traffic corridor anywhere in the U.S. that comes close to the kind of traffic density on the Tokaido-sen.
This is the reason why high speed rail cannot be profitable in the U.S.
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