this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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It loses huge amounts of money because they’re connecting the entire country, even remote rural areas. There are benefits to that but profit is not one of them.
Compare it to the interstate highway network in the US. We have good highway access to every state, every region, no matter how remote. I live near interstate I-90 and it serves a huge amount of traffic, well worth the cost. The same is probably true at the other end 3,000 miles away, but can you say that about most of the distance? Very few people would drive the full distance , and Montana for example, can’t have much traffic. This road loses an enormous amount of money, for most of it.
The entire interstate highway system in the US loses an enormous amount of money and is just not worth it financially. However I would argue it was well worth doing, has been a huge benefit to the country, and is exactly analogous to the same question about a nationwide passenger rail network