It's not a money loser. TGV is highly profitable in France. All the major intercity routes in the UK run at a profit and these operate at 125-140mph, which is high speed by US standards.
LOL. French here. I am not sure where you get that impression, but TGV lines cost dozens of billions of euros to be built, and the ROI is calculated in 30-40 years time, so saying the "TGV is highly profitable" is a pure lie, because we don't know in 40 years if people will still take it as much as now. On top of that, the SNCF (public company operating the TGV) is a sponge debt and if it were not for the ongoing government spending to keep it alive every single year with huge cash injections, it would have disappeared long ago.
The national highway system isn't making anyone any money, and we don't criticize it for costing upkeep and the billions it cost to build.
I'm of the opinion that good infrastructure should not be turning a profit. If it were profitable out of the gate you would just let private enterprise build it. The reason you get the state involved is because good infrastructure like high speed rail is a force multiplier on the effectiveness of everyone around it, even when it isn't turning a profit in and of itself (and usually you get the best societal value out of these things when they are a loss leader, and tickets are not prohibitively expensive...).
You want a high speed rail system in California so that hundreds of thousands or millions of workers could stop spending significantly more combined time and money on the much more inefficient road network when it comes to commuting. It would be a net positive in less need to maintain over-capacity highways, less car deaths, less anxiety and stress from the traffic conditions, and more workplace mobility along the rail lines.
> The reason you get the state involved is because good infrastructure like high speed rail is a force multiplier on the effectiveness of everyone around it, even when it isn't turning a profit in and of itself
This is absolutely true. I live a distance from Toronto that can be covered in about 40 minutes of driving, but the traffic jams in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) are absolutely insane, and as a result it is not uncommon for this 40 minute trip to take 1.5 to 2 hours, with a random but not infrequent chance that it will take 3 hours instead, based on an accident.
A study in 2013 (http://www.canadianbusiness.com/economy/the-end-of-gridlock/) found that gridlock was costing Toronto $11 billion CAD every year. That's just Toronto, and says nothing about surrounding communities. The cost to Ontario as a whole has to be in the tens of billions annually. There's no way that the agencies that build and run public transport in Ontario will earn billions of dollars in annual profits from it, but that's not the point - the point is to create public infrastructure that generates a healthy economy which does return money to the public purse in the long run.
> and we don't criticize it for costing upkeep and the billions it cost to build.
Why shouldn't we criticize it ? Ever read Bastiat ? The money you spend somewhere is money you don't spend somewhere else. Wouldn't that be better to spend those billions in better schools, better hospitals, better metros, etc ? The choices you made have long ramifications in time and billions do not come cheap.
By we I mean average, not all. More in the "nobody criticizes it, even though there are plenty of reasons one could or should" less in the "nobody has a right to criticize a massive government spending project that has demonstrably warped society as a result".
I've gone through way too many debates on the costs and benefits of free public roads, and I've argued from both sides. Be critical - just don't be hypocritical (which a lot of people are when they make a false dichotomy between the value and feasibility of rail vs road).
The national highway system is funded in the main by user fees like the Federal gas tax and could readily be funded entirely by such fees if politically desirable.
It strains belief that Federal rail service could similarly survive without infusions from general revenue.
But if you are comparing to highways in the US then surely a fair comparison would socialise some of the capital and maintenance costs of the infrastructure. Even so 30-40 year payback on the whole lot is not that bad. SNCF is probably in debt because commuter rail is heavily subsidised, something that is necessary to do to keep cities flowing.
Also, The "Cour des Comptes" (Government level Court of Audit) recently pointed some lines were inefficient due to poor stations selection. Because everyone along a line want their share of it, the trains stop too much and cannot be "high speed" long enough. They argue the TGV should connect a handful of hub stations and delegate the rest to local transportation network, which is also well developed.
If governments tax carbon, then electric trains will be profitable, especially in nearly carbon electricity free France. (France uses mostly nuclear power)
While I strongly support a good rail network, while it may be possible that specific routes in the UK run at a profit, note that the vast majority of UK rail franchises only return a profit because of massive subsidies. The overall UK rail network is heavily subsidised overall - the few franchises that return more in franchise payments than they receive in subsidies hardly makes a dent in the overall subsidies.
The exact breakdown from DfT and Network Rail are easily accessible on gov.uk.
