> Going an extra 110mph(180km/h) would be a huge win. It greatly extends the distance where a train wins over a jet.

Not really, because jets will go much more places that your single maglev line ever will. That's the problem with hi-tech trains. They are extremely costly to deploy in terms of infrastructure, they go over land that could be used for other purposes, and because of the large investment required they only go in very few places. Jets win everywhere else.

"Jets win everywhere else."

Of course they don't. Getting to an airport 60-90 minutes before a flight that's only 60-90 minutes doesn't make much sense

This is true.

But the requirement to arrive 90 minutes before departure time is not a problem with the vehicle but the bureaucracy and security apparatus around it.

True Story: while I like to arrive well before a flight (just in case) when I was younger it was not unheard of to arrive at the airport _minutes_ before flight departure and simply stroll down the causeway, and onto the flight.

I could walk into the heathrow terminal for edinburgh plonk down my card buy a ticket walk into the lounge have a quick pint and be on a plane to ediburgh within 15/20 min

Of course Heathrow itself is an hour from almost everywhere in central London, and Edinburgh Airport is 30 mins by road from Princes Street, so your 20 mins just became two hours.

hmm used to be 30 mins in a taxi to haethrow and the train journy takes 5 hours.

And the british airways cream tea was amazing as it should be for >£200

Did you even read my comment ? Jets will go WHERE the maglev trains won't, even if it's not that far.

You are being a bit vague. If I want to travel 60 miles, I'm not going to get on a jet. Do I want to get on a jet to travel 200 miles? What exact use case are you trying to describe? Also consider, for example, that a 777 needs a big airport.

This reminds me how once several years ago I had to fly MKE -> ORD -> LHR where the distance between MKE and ORD is about 70 miles. The MKE -> ORD flight was full by the way and it took ridiculous 2 hours to get there (from boarding to leaving the plane). I think I did it because the direct flight was several hundred $ extra and I happened to be in MKE area anyway.

All these scenarios don't matter because wherever you are going most of the time you won't have anything BUT a jet and not a maglev train to bring you there (because it will only connect 2 cities to each other, and you'll never map out the whole territory with maglev train lines due to their prohibitive cost). Unless you want to take you car.

It seems to me that you would need to exercise a fair bit of eminent domain, and there you might find that the world is indeed smaller.

The article mentions Washington to Baltimore as the first segment to be built. The existing rail lines pass over a number of level crossings, and pass under some bridge spans that are fairly snug for the existing track. And the mile or two before you get to Baltimore's Penn Station are in tunnel. I doubt the tunnel has much width to spare--how much would it cost in 2014 to widen a couple of miles of tunnel under a densely built city?

You could get a ballpark figure by looking at Crossrail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail

73 miles of track, 40 stations, 26 miles of tunnel under London. £16bn ($27bn-ish). So, for your project, I'd handwave at $1-5bn.

>Also consider, for instance, in the NYC area, you could live 100 miles away from Manhattan and easily commute to work.

This is not a good thing.