We haven’t had much to say about our aborning “Bullet Train” and the plans therefor because there hasn’t been much news in that department lately. But the Los Angeles Times of October 21, 2016, at p. B1, Bullet Train’s Capacity Could be Downsized, informs us that we are about to get less bang for our buck. Quoting:
The California bullet train authority has told its design engineers that the future [railroad] system would have shorter trains and smaller station platforms reducing the capacity of individual trains by roughly 50% and potentially the capacity of the entire Los Angeles-to-San Francisco route.
This dispatch says nothing about the — to us — obvious consequence that smaller trains means smaller passenger capacity and therefore lower revenues. Yes?
To borrow Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite line, “and so it goes.”