Canadian high speed rail will do what government trains always do: Enrich the politicians who choose the route and place the stations near their friends' real estate holdings. The track construction will transfer billions to the landowners whose property it crosses. Then the train will forever spend vast amounts of tax money, because train rides aren't worth what it costs the government to provide them, so ticket prices can never cover the cost. If the tickets were priced high enough to cover the train's cost, then too few passengers would buy them and again, the train needs a tax subsidy. Passenger rail barely makes sense in dense urban areas like New York and Chicago. Even megacities like Houston and Los Angeles are not dense enough to sustain it. So the tickets must be paid for by taxpayers who do not ride the trains, just as they always are, even in Europe's vaunted Eurostar. With its massive subsidies extracted from non-passengers by force, the trains can run and enrich the people who own real estate near the stations. Who by coincidence will be friends of the politicians who promoted the train.
