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A comment on California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B. Parent comment

Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B by bluthru on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @11:38PM (#16174744)
As a rule of thumb high speed rail is 1/10 the CO2 of flying. However, I wonder what the carbon footprint of creating the tracks is?
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Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B by dx034 on Thursday January 18, 2018 @03:13AM (#16175503)
The track can be used for 1-2 centuries (as they have been in Europe). That includes many refurbishments and replacement of steel but much of the construction cost will be low per passenger.
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Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B by baud147258 on Thursday January 18, 2018 @05:39AM (#16176069)
Older tracks can't be used for high speed trains. In France, all the new high-speed lines are constructed for this usage (lot of straight lines). On older lines, an high-speed train will be at the same speed as a normal commuter train.
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Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B by ebikelaw on Thursday January 18, 2018 @04:46PM (#16181800)
He didn’t say they could. But tracks built today can be used forever, because wheel-on-rail technology has a hard limit at Mach 0.5 and we’ll never have faster trains than we have today.
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