this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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At least with younger folk yeah. Only people that hate trains are boomers and weirdos who think gasoline is the second manliest thing other than trump. It’s a huge project though, don’t know if I’ll ever live to see New York connected to Texas by high speed rail
I mean, NY is already connected to Texas https://www.amtrak.com/plan-your-trip.html
Assuming all of those tracks (or comparable ones) are upgraded: It would still likely not be something someone wants to take as opposed to a direct flight. Because the train would likely need to stop in New Jersy, DC, Virgina, Charlotte, and Atlanta before you change trains to get to Houston or Dallas.
Which... is normal. That is how trains work. I always reference it, but Makoto Shinkai's works LOVE the imagery of someone frantically trying to navigate an imperfect public transportation system to get to the one they love. And... that is reality. Even in Japan (basically the gold standard for public transportation) you are changing trains pretty regularly, have a LOT of stops along the way, and may need to do the last leg on a bus route that only runs twice a day.
Flying is such a miserable experience from start to finish that I would opt for rail every time if it was viable, even if it took 3-4 times as long.
I mean, the good news is that you basically already can
Quick check says amtrak from NYP to LAX is 67.5 hours long. Or about 2.79 days
Which is a lot more than a six hour flight. But... that is six hours plus an hour or so on each side (at least) AND is a direct flight, so "one day" is how I would classify that. You aren't doing much in a day when you fly from NY to LA.
Which... is the 3-4x as long that you were asking for.
But hey. Maybe you are cool with spending the vast majority of a week long holiday in a train. I doubt your employers are fine with you spending three days to go to a conference on the west coast and another three days to come back.
The problem today is that it's an order of magnitude longer. Chicago to LA by airplane is 4 hours. Chicago to LA via Amtrak is about 56 hours. I don't know that high speed rail is going to fix that problem, sure it might get it down some, but even a 24 hour train is six times longer than flying.
I say this as someone that takes Amtrak at every opportunity because I enjoy trains and want to see them become viable for more people.
You’re looking at it from a coast to coast perspective when it should really be an intra-state one.
People aren’t regularly traveling from Chicago to La on a daily basis, even by plane. They are traveling within the same state or to nearby states instead.
Dallas-Houston, SF-LA, Miami-Orlando are all distances that people have to drive/fly to on a daily basis that could easily be replaced by hsr.
I don't disagree, regional high speed is where it's gotta start.