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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 dx034 on Thursday January 18, 2018 @04:00AM (#16175686)
> * Trains ultimately require close to 1 staff member per 4 passengers, much more than a budget airline.

Maybe in the US. In Europe, a train with 500-750 people capacity has one train driver and maybe 3-4 staff (plus on-board restaurant but that's run at a profit). No staff at smaller train stations and only minimal staff at many larger ones.

Maintenance needs staff but that's the same at airports.

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Re:California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B by MrFoof on Thursday January 18, 2018 @01:32PM (#16179877)
As stated in another comment (which links to a transcript by the author with ~two dozen cited sources), this isn't staff on the train, but calculated by breaking down Amtrak's headcount of 20K people, and amortizing it over the number of annual trips and passengers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16179794 Result is ~1 employee per 4 passengers per trip.

The author has some other really interesting (with cited sources) videos about many other transit topics, including how hub-and-spoke/direct played out in the aircraft marketplace, how budget airlines have such great profit margins, long haul aircraft economics, airline schedule methodology, etc.

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