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Construction Costs... <br /> I'm curious to know about the hidden costs of HSR. It is absolutely clear that it would be cheaper to build HSR infrastructure than Maglev infrastructure...at first. It is clear that using right-of-way that's parallel to interstates saves money. I'm not exactly a physicist, but I know that interstates have some pretty tight turns as they snake around the perimeters of towns in their paths. These turns are far too tight for HSR, which must be as close to straight as possible in order to allow maximum speed. Due to Maglev's ability to take tighter turns at higher speeds through the use of extreme superelevation, Maglev guideways would require far less modification to the existing interstate system to accomodate them. With HSR, would those necessary modifications to interstates be billed to the interstate authority and, therefore, not show up on the price tag of HSR construction? <br /> <br />Maintenance... <br /> Of all the "hidden" costs of HSR, maintenance is the granddaddy of them all. A penny saved now is not necessarily a penny saved later. In fact, a penny saved now is often a penny spent later. With HSR, maintenance is paramount. With HSR, maintenance is more expensive than the maintenance bill of any other railroad in the US today. With a government-subsidized HSR network of an American scale, we would have to send a humongous maintenance bill to our children and our childrens' children. When we give a gift to our children, do we give them an invoice too? Maglev will be more expensive now, but the maintenance bill will be lower. The end result is a lower cost 10, 20, 30, and more years from now. Furthermore, it will allow the highest speeds. If Maglev is going to compete with motor and air traffic, it has to have competitive convenience (lots of stations and high frequency), and it has to have competitive speeds (read, coast to coast in under 7 hours). Only Maglev and planes can do that without having their infrastructures realigned every night.
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