Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ocb 3276 days ago
Not really true, pretty much every intra-regional trip would be well served by high speed rail. Seattle-Portland, Charlotte-Atlanta, Minneapolis-Chicago, etc.

All of these trips are currently frequently taken by car because flying is a nuisance and takes a lot longer than just the flight duration itself.
2 comments
tptacek 3276 days ago
See downthread about Minneapolis-Chicago, which I do not think makes much sense:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14679127

I don't dispute that there are pockets of the US that would be well-served by rail. Maybe SEA-PDX is one of them! Note, though, that neither Seattle nor Portland are in the top 10 economically most important US cities.

I'm not anti-train. I love HSR. I wish we had more of it. But I think there's a solid reason that we don't.

link
rsync 3275 days ago
"See downthread about Minneapolis-Chicago, which I do not think makes much sense"

MPLS-Chicago has never really resonated with me, but there are some straight north south lines that I think make a lot of sense ...

Duluth-MPLS-DesMoines-KCMO would make a lot of sense.

Cheyenne-FortCollins-Denver-ColoSprings-Pueblo ... that would make a lot of sense.

link
majormajor 3276 days ago
I don't know how much more useful or attractive train travel gets between Portland and Seattle just by making the train faster. The train in place already loses to air travel most of the time because it's not cheaper enough to justify it.

Any conversations of car-vs-train have to account for the linear scaling cost compared to loading up 4+ people and/or a bunch of stuff in a car.

link