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Richard Lawless spent most of his career as a government bureaucrat. He was a CIA officer.  How much he knows about running a business is unknown, as is the veracity of his projections for TCR. Enthusiastic proponents of large projects tend to overstate the upsides of the project and understate the downsides, as noted by several GAO studies as well as at least one Swedish study. If TCR fails without being a burden on Texas, JCR, as well as the investors, would have to eat the losses. Whether they would do that without seeking some direct or indirect relief from Texas and/or federal taxpayers is problematic.  The initial estimated cost for the California High Speed Rail Project (CHS) was approximately $33 billion. It ballooned to more than $98 billion before being scaled back to $68 billion, which is the most recent projection for the LAX to SF portion of the project. The estimated cost of the total project, which will extend the rail line to Sacramento and San Diego is $91.4 billion, as per numbers shown in Wikipedia and supported from various source documents. The cost estimates do not include the cost to service the debt associated with the project.The CHS promoters proposed to fund the project from a variety of sources, including federal grants, state grants, A-1 bonds, etc. The cost of the debt is unknown, in part because only 13.2% of the estimated total cost has been funded. If the project were funded mostly by California Municipal Bonds, at the current average Yield to Maturity for 30 year California municipal bonds of 4.3535 per cent, the total cost of the project could be as high as $124.1 billion. The rates were obtained via a download from Fidelity Investments Bond Center. This number may be conservative, because it assumes all the financing would be done up front, in one shot, which is unrealistic. It also overlooks the fact that interest rates are likely to increase and, therefore, subsequent tranches of debt would likely carry a higher interest rate, thereby boosting the cost of the project. Thus, it is possible that the total cost of the project could be considerably higher than $124.1 billion. The initial route of the CHS is 492 miles. If the estimated total cost of the project, including financing, is reasonably close to my estimate, it works out to $252.2 million per mile. The bookends of the CHS go through some very congested and/or mountainous areas, which the TCR would not have to confront, except for north Houston, which is also congested. If the same numbers were applied to the proposed TCR route, the cost of the project would be $60.5 billion. If the cost per mile for the TCR were half the cost per mile for the CHS, the cost of the project would be $30.3 billion.  And if the cost per mile were just 1/3rd of the cost per mile for the CHS, the project would still cost $20.2 billion. These numbers include financing, which the TCR estimate does not appear to include. I have a hard time, at least based on what we know now, believing that the TCR can be built for $10 billion, and there is no potential liability for Texans if the project sours.
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