> There already is high speed-ish rail travel in the Northeast and it's very popular. But, for example, even if you could magically offer 6-8 hour train service between New York and Chicago, relatively few people would take it given that flying would be significantly faster.

Texan living in NYC here. I disagree. I would happily pay to take a 6 hour train to Chicago over a flight anyday. LGA/JFK are nightmares to book last minute flights and high-speed rail is a favorable experience to flying sometimes.

In contrast, there's no "useful" rail network in Texas — at all. If there was a rail network, like the single-high speed line proposed between Dallas and Houston, it would totally dominate and disrupt. People fly to/from cities in Texas all the time.

There are many many cities that would benefit from a rail network because the cost would be considerably lower than flying. If you build it, they will come.

>if you could magically offer 6-8 hour train service between New York and Chicago

You know, that's not terribly fast... 1200 km in 6 hrs, so 200 km/hr. France started operating 320 km/hr trains in 1990's. Do you think people would go by rail if the journey was 4 hours, city center - to - city center?

Also a Texan who lived in NYC :D and now lives in the bay area. I'm constantly amazed that we haven't placed a solid, high speed rail throughout this area.

Housing costs are skyrocketing and you have people who work for all ends of the spectrum (Google down to dishwashers) moving away because they can't afford the lifestyle they envision here. Hour long commutes are the norm and every day I see at least one wreck on my way to work.

Coming from NYC where you can get anywhere in Manhattan w/in 20 minutes by train.. it's incredibly frustrating.

I agree we should also be looking outside of the bay area (connecting cities across America), but also see a pressing need here with a market that would use the rail system like crazy.

I think your point is generally valid for the US. However, Chicago-NYC might be a bad example, since it actuality might be viable. The Shinkansen goes ~200mp/h and thus would be able to go back and forth in 4-5hrs. Given that trains are less weather dependent, can drop you off on there middle of the city rather than the outskirts and don't come with the same security theater you probably come out with a comparable time frame and more reliability on that connection. Things like connecting the west coast to anything but itself are completely unviable though because of the reasons you gave.

Newer trains can go 300+ mph, especially the levitating variety where noise is less of a factor. Given how long it takes to navigate through the unbelievable bullshit in most airports a train has a 2h head start the moment it leaves the station.

In addition, every train I have been on is more comfortable than any but the most expensive airline fares.

NYC to Chicago goes through a (smaller) continental divide though (the Appalachians) [ADDED in what's also a pretty built-up area of the country]. So HSR is problematic on that route. It's about a 20 hour trip today so cutting that by 2/3rds would be a significant achievement but probably still wouldn't be enough to make it interesting.

The somewhat controversial LA to San Francisco route through the Central Valley may make sense. We'll see in 15 or 20 years or whatever. Unfortunately LA is pretty spread out so you don't get the same downtown to downtown advantages that trains in the Northeast have.

The route that probably would have the biggest potential benefit is speeding up the Northeast Corridor to the point where Boston to DC was more practical vs. flying. Amtrak is apparently doing some upgrades but decided that the most aggressive improvements weren't cost-justified.

The Allegheny Front, where the continental divide runs between Altoona, PA and Frostburg, MD, wouldn't be a particular challenge for HSR, because they're good at hillclimbing, and the mass of the trainset is nothing like loaded coal trains or intermodal double-stack trains which currently frequent this area.

LGV Sud-Est has 3.5% grades, for example; the Pennsylvania Railroad (now Norfolk Southern) Gallitzin-Horseshoe Curve-Altoona stretch is 1.85%, B&O (CSX) Sand Patch Grade further south is 2%.

Rather, overcoming the general ruggedness of the terrain is the greatest expense. Slower railroads can meander along rivers, but a HSR needs large sweeping curves (with large radii), requiring expensive fills or cuts or viaducts. Some tunnels would be needed to cross some of the linear ridges, just like the Pennsylvania Turnpike (and the predecessor railroad that used the same right-of-way) did. In fact, it's likely that an alignment would closely parallel the turnpike, as the landscape gets significantly more rugged south of Maryland or north of I-80.

A gentler route following the Empire Corridor (roughly, NYC->Albany->Buffalo) may be cheaper to construct, but would be considered a "detour" by a casual observer -- and the expense of the NYC->Albany portion may not make it worthwhile.

Sadly, it's not very likely that such a Mid-Atlantic-to-Chicago passenger-only railway could be economical to construct and operate. US infrastructure costs routinely run much higher than the international average for comparable projects, and even the as-the-crow-flies distance (1100+ km, 700+ miles) between NYC-Chicago puts it too far out of HSR's ideal range, even in countries where people actually ride trains.

If they built that route what's the likelyhood it wouldn't also have stops in Philly, pitsburg, Cleveland which would add significant time. I can't see it being a direct route with no stops inbetween.

Shinkansen is actually quite weather dependent.

All trains will stop at the first safe opportunity in the event of heavy rain, winds, or snow. It's one of the reasons (no level crossings is another) there has never been a fatal accident involving HSR in Japan.

There are tons of good city pairs. People are paying to be carted like baggage by Spirit.

We subsidize highways and air travel at the expense of other ground options. It shouldn't be 70% cheaper for me to drive my family to Florida or the Carolinas for vacation from NY vs air or rail. But it is.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, do that I95 trip every year. There are dozens of corridors like that.

The "Texas triangle" is one example of some good city pairs, which are a lot more practically situated than the pie-in-the-sky NYC-LA route people always bring up as a reason HSR won't work in the U.S. due to distances (and this is not the only such set of routes, just a particularly high-volume set).

Houston-Dallas is a very high-volume city pair forming one leg of the triangle, of length around 250 miles. People do fly on this route, but most people don't, because between the airports' relatively inconvenient location (especially Houston's), security, delays, etc., it doesn't save you that much time. So most people just drive. But driving is just far enough, and stress/traffic-filled enough, that many people who drive that route regularly hate doing so (it takes 4-6 hours, depending on how good a day you're having, and much of that is with wall-to-wall traffic containing a heavy volume of trailer trucks in the mix). I've done it many times myself, and I'd love to take a train instead. For me personally, it wouldn't even have to be that fast: if the train could get me there reliably in 3 hours (i.e. average speed 85 mph, not even talking about Shinkansen speeds), I'd be very satisfied. Related things can be said about the other two legs of the triangle: San Antonio - Houston (200 miles) and the San Antonio - Austin - Dallas corridor (80+195 = 275 miles).

The topography here is also more friendly to rail than, for example, LA-SF, being mostly flat and open and with shorter distances. But unfortunately the state-level political geography is less friendly (at a local level rail is popular in all four of these cities, but the state is another matter).

But these are very spread out cities so if you fly (or take a hypothetical train) you now need to rent a car at the other end. I was in Dallas a while back and basically couldn't walk to a restaurant a mile away because there was no sidewalk.

That's a great point.

The train from Albany to NYC is at or near capacity daily, although it's only 150 miles. Similar use case in many ways... It's enough of a pain to drive that people want to avoid it, and it's better than a car to go to Manhattan.

My uncle used to fly LGA to BOS a couple of times a week... I betcha that train trip is shorter now given the security and other nonsense associated with flying.

Depends where you are coming from and going to. I do prefer to take the train driving from the western Boston suburbs to Manhattan (so RTE to NYP) but it's not actually faster than driving directly. Probably is faster than flying though.

These smaller routes do seem like a very practical case. Another is people going to/from the twin cities -> Milwaukee -> Chicago. You can do it on the Amtrak now but it's very slow and just easier to drive.

I'm not sure I understand. Even if rail were cheaper to get from, say, Boston to Charlotte, you'd then almost certainly have to rent a car for that vacation so it's hard to see a train being an economical option for most families.

And Amtrak does offer an auto train though from Virginia to Florida.

I like the train but I don't assume it's a particularly economic option.

There's this newfangled thing called Uner now. ;)

Any trip where people fly is a rail candidate. The hassle and bullshit associated with flying is high and getting higher.

Taxis/Uber don't really work in very spread out areas relative to having a car.

Amtrak could make a killing with a service that sent you via high speed rail and sent your car via regular rail either before or after you departed.

There are tons of city pairs but because the airline industry is heavily subsidized it's often cheaper to fly.

The Boston to Washington D.C. corridor could easily sustain itself if the trains put in place were reliable, expedient, and low-fuss.

There's no technological barriers here, as China has proven, only political ones. A lot of people see Amtrak as a problem, an anachronism, not a solution.

Airlines are subsidized? Not according to this article.[1]

[1]http://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2015/04/14/u-s-airlines-...

Airports are a spectacularly expensive undertaking and require heavy subsidies to even exist. If the airlines had to pay for those with cash they'd be bankrupt unless they charged more. Then there's the subsidies paid to the oil companies that makes jet fuel more cost effective, and airlines burn a lot of that. As a portion of net cost, fuel is likely higher for aviation than for any other form of travel.

$250B sounds like a lot of money, but that's since the 1970s. In that time how many airports have been built or rebuilt? What's the net cost of that?

The footprint of a rail station is significantly smaller, the costs are proportionately lower. There's subsidies there, too, but they're significantly smaller, and many of those were provided in the early 20th century back when rail was a vital link.

Also Forbes is utterly useless as a site. Not only do they bitch endlessly about ad blockers, which I only use because the sorts of advertising sites like that promote are offensively stupid, but it splits up that short article into three pages with interstitial ads between each page.

Fuck that.

The corridor does sustain itself. In fact, it basically makes the money that Amtrak loses throughout the rest of the country. It doesn't really work (for most people) for Boston to DC trips but it's quite popular for NYC north and NYC south.