America’s billionaire train tycoon:As society grapples with how to make travel safe in the age of coronavirus, private equity billionaire Wes Edens is betting $9 billion that America’s transportation future is passenger rail. His vision? Tax-exempt bonds to create high-speed train lines linking Orlando to Miami and Las Vegas to Southern California. “Great fortunes are generally made by solving the most obvious problems,” Edens says. But U.S. passenger rail has always been a money pit. Here’s how Edens wants to solve it.(Forbes) “The lack of passenger travel by train in this country is a travesty. It’s a gigantic opportunity.”
The problem with passenger rail is that, outside the Northeast Corridor and a few other places, American sprawl is built around the car. Once you arrive in Orlando or Vegas you need to rent a car anyway, unless your stay is entirely on the Strip or within Disney World.
%% I did enjoy riding a train as a kid; prefer air, auto, walk. Amtrack should get defunded+ ACA is a trainwreck======================================================================================== I think W Buffet did well buying his train but its not a passenger train; barge line is much much more efficient
A civil engineer once explained to me why high speed rail be as won't great in the US as it would in other countries. A good research to dig up. I forgot the argument but surely we would have followed Japan a long, long time ago. However, real estate investments around a high speed hub sounds interesting. Corona and rural flight notwithstanding.
You will be amazed to know that Edens has been securing tax exempt bonds for over 2 years now to construct this rail service for over a year now. His public-private financing model provides a base support for the respective model, a pioneer work to unleash the private capital. He shows that markets have been more skeptical after raising $2.7 billion of tax exempted bonds.