You say like it is a bad thing but I'll take 12 hours in a nice stable train over 7 hours spent in going in and out of airports and sitting on economy airliner seats.

I would actually pay a premium. This actually is reality today. Acela on the Northeast corridor is more expensive than comparable air fares and it's not even that good.

Same in the UK LON to EDR by train is more expensive than flying - and that's not counting the cost of peoples time for the longer train journey.

I do like the idea of the 3/4 day trip as part of a holiday

https://www.seat61.com/UnitedStates.htm

Maybe you would. We know from other countries that in general 5 hours is about the max time people will spend on a train before they choose to fly instead.

Because of air resistance planes are more fuel efficient as well for those longer trips (don't forget about energy lost to brakes when the train needs to stop)

> don't forget about energy lost to brakes when the train needs to stop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_brake#Electric_ra...

I'm still hoping for rail. It's much more carbon friendly, and has the opportunity to be way less stressful.

I'd do 18 hours on a NY to LA if I could walk around, eat, talk, sleep, etc over a 5 hour misery ride in an airplane any day.

A single NY-LA route alone would cost over $500 billion. High speed rail is well $100m/mile, just for the track.

I'd like to see it thoroughly planned out, and a real cost estimate. Most of the trip is plainsland...simple. Getting through the Rockies, way more complicated. I've tried to read on the subject but estimates are an order of magnitude off between projects.

All that said, of course, figuring out how to lower costs safely would be a great thing.

The Rockies are the big obstacle of course, but the stretch east of the Mississippi is also problematic... hard to go around all the towns, and you've also got to cross the Appalachians and/or Alleghenies.

> High speed rail is well $100m/mile, just for the track.

That's frankly an insane figure, and depends vastly on what you're building and where. For something that's largely running through rural landscape, you really should expect no more than half that for the total construction cost. Maybe US construction is that expensive, but… wow.

If we're talking east-west in the US, there are two major mountain ranges, many smaller ones, vast deserts, let alone getting contiguous land in the East.

At those prices you can build the railway with maglev technology. I don't think these costs are realistic.

That seems too high. I'd rather say in the order of c.$100bn.

In France the average cost is €15m/km, and that's for extremely high standards / constraints (350km/h or 220mph nominal speed, incl. barriers & bridges for wildlife)

12 hours is a lot, but for shorter distances most people would prefer a good train to a plane. Living in Europe, I will take 4-5 hour train ride compared to a 1h flight, most of my friends as well. Many people will also prefer 5-8 hour 100mph train ride to 1h plane ride due to comfort, price and carbon footprint.

Well... price-wise, in lots of Europe, taking a plane is cheaper..

What really made the difference for me is that the 4-5 hour train ride is done after 4 to 5 hours. My 1 hour flight starts 3 to 3.5h before the flight to get to the airport and through security and at the destination, after de-boarding, I'll spend another hour for security and to get from the airport to my actual destination.

Plane only seems cheaper in many cases. Shuttle to and from the airport can be as expensive or even more expensive than that flight. Frequent delays / cancelled flights, check in misery, security theater and so on. If possible and available I'm more than happy to take the Thalys, ICE or TGV.

Not if your doing it more than once a year and certainly business travellers wont want to.

I recall one of the senior marketing guys where I worked did London to Edinburgh on the overnight sleeper didn't get much sleep and was uncomfortable.

You can still work two consecutive days taking the sleeper train. Leave central London at 6.30 p.m. or later, have something to eat/drink, hop on the sleeper and get off at the other end in the centre of the city, bright and early.

Traditionally there has been a large jolt at Crewe where carriages and/or the locomotive gets changed on the train. This will wake you up. But if you are properly tired from working hard then sleep is no problem.

They changed the trains recently. They were with stupidly small 'bedrooms' with absolutely nowhere to put your stuff. Plus sharing a 'bedroom' with a random stranger in the other bunk is slightly weird when they snore and take up all of the available space.

The end carriage used to be a gambling den with an all-night bar. It wasn't supposed to be a gambling den but the large round table and movable chairs made it perfect for betting on card games. The crowd was a regular one for this, working on oil rigs in the North Sea. I liked this illicit activity not that I was involved.

I also did the plane option a few times, but this was not optimal if you were trying to get work done.

Rather than just take the tube across town to Euston for the sleeper train there would be a fraught journey out to the airport - Heathrow. So you would have to do this during working hours hoping not to get caught up in rush hour. At the other end you would need to get a taxi from the airport plus you would need to book a hotel room. There would be no working maximum hours at both destinations, any money saved by the plane would be wasted on taxi and hotel bills and it would also be a mad rush rather than sensibly paced. The 'bump in the night' at Crewe and the guy in the lower bunk snoring was a small price to pay.

Most plane flights are for leisure rather than business. What makes sense for work doesn't make sense for leisure, the cheap flight wins every time when it is you that is paying for it.

The day train is better for that one (4hrs20). Though I've flown the last few times. It's often cheaper.

There is no need for it to be fully end to end on the country.

Regionally it would make a ton of sense over absurdly short flights.

Most people are not flying LA to NYC so that is a minority use case anyways.

> Most people are not flying LA to NYC so that is a minority use case anyways.

This is true, but it is however one of the busiest aviation routes in the US. Certainly you can almost certainly go after some of the busiest routes (New York/Chicago, LA/SF), but where you go after that is less clear.

> The US does not have the population density to make HSR viable.

The Democrats, after they take the Senate and Presidency, should launch a $1-$1.5 trillion regional HSR development project, partnering with Japan.

Here are the regional routes, generally speaking, that make tremendous sense and should be built this decade:

Oklahoma City, Dallas Ft Worth, San Antonio, Austin, Houston

San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Bay Area, Sacramento

Milwaukee, Chicago, St Louis, Indianapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Baltimore, New York City, Boston

Arguments can be made for linking up New Orleans initially; then later using that to link into Florida and Atlanta. Later on you'd link Atlanta to Nashville, and then Nashville to Louisville, completing the Texas to NYC connection. You'd later take Dallas or San Antonio out to El Paso, and then to Tucson & Phoenix, and then to Los Angeles, completing Texas to California. You could also debate Atlanta to Charlotte to Richmond to DC, completing Texas to DC & NYC by another path and creating an easy link from NYC to Miami. No idea what to do about Portland, Seattle, Denver and a few others.

If you build the three major regional HSR sections, you get a de facto national trivially with just a few more connections.

Ideally we would work with Canada and they'd simultaneously fund HSR using the same tech from Japan for max compatibility, and we'd link across the border to Toronto (and they'd link Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City.

This can be done. All it requires is the Democrats to have the gumption to steamroll the zoning / regulatory / environmental bullshit out of the way using executive orders and being abusive with federal power as necessary to the loads of idiots that will inevitably try to get in the way. Knock them down, push them out of the way, build the fucking rail. We might get one good shot at doing it before we drown in debt and it's too late (ie we might as well drop another trillion dollars plus in debt into the never-to-be-repaid ocean).

That sounds like a massive waste of money to me. Those first 2 regions are full of cities with massive sprawl and little public transit meaning you will almost certainly want a car at the end of your trip and at that point, just drive, they are all like a 3-5 hour drive anyways which isn't bad (interstate traffic isn't bad outside of cities).

The older east coast cities make some sense at least since they tend to have some trains and density due to historical past but they mostly already have rail lines you can take (albeit not high speed).

Would trying to build hsr at scale make the costs come down?