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.