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[quote user="al-in-chgo"] What is your idea of "hard evidence"?  Physically bound printouts from the cost accounting or marketing departments at SNCF?  Yes!  The financial information can be found in the SNCF financial statements, although they are not nearly as transparent as Amtrak's financial reports.  If you actually have hardcopy French statistics, shouldn't you be the one to share them with us?  With actual numbers, I mean?  And policy and operating decisions? I did not challenge Mr. O'Toole's asertions.  Data regarding the profiles of people who use the high speed rail systems in Europe and Japan are probably difficult to get.  If they are available, they would show hard data, i.e. incomes, type of travel, etc.   The examples from other countries are to show a couple of things:  (1) by reason of analogy, what has worked there might work here; and (2) no major industrialized country that has set at least a basic HSR network as a priority has failed to achieve that.  Deficits of funding and technology can be made up for if the political will and social support are there. If the users will not pay the full cost to use the system, either directly or indirectly, the cost falls on non-users, who for the most part are the taxpayers. The first question is whether the United States should build high speed rail to solve a real transport problem.  The second question is whether it can afford it.  If the answer is yes, then looking at what other countries do to get ideas that may be applicable here is appropriate.  But building high speed rail because the Europeans and Japanese have done so is akin to adopting the budget of the family down the street irrespective of whether it meets your needs.  With the exception of a few rants about Mr. O'Toole's political views, which are irrelevant, most of the folks who have responded to his views with some worthy ideas.  However, no one has put forth a realistic plan of how to pay for the proposed high speed rail or a concrete cost/benefit analysis.  In the business world where I spent all of my working career, if I had proposed a major project without a reasonable projection of the cost and benefits, I would have been on the street looking for another job.[/quote]
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