|
Sitting on a train from Jilin to Beijing, I noted the below from Wikipedia: > In another study conducted about Japan's High-speed rail service, they found a "4-hour wall" in high-speed rail's market share, which if the high speed rail journey time exceeded 4 hours, then people would likely choose planes over high-speed rail. For instance, from Tokyo to Osaka, a 2h22m-journey by Shinkansen, high-speed rail has an 85% market share whereas planes have 15%. From Tokyo to Hiroshima, a 3h44m-journey by Shinkansen, high-speed rail has a 67% market share whereas planes have 33%. The situation is the reverse on the Tokyo to Fukuoka route where high-speed rail takes 4h47m and rail only has 10% market share and planes 90%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail The journey is a bit more than 4 hours. The above "4-hour wall" seemed to make a lot of sense. Passenger ridership end-to-end was not very high, but intermediate station pickup and putdown, consisting of quite large cities by European or North American standards, was high. Taking a plane would be slightly faster and sometimes a little cheaper, I prefer the train because of time in laptop/connectivity, good seat size/leg room/decline, ability to have a snooze. Without the intermediate cities, the train would have be mainly empty. What the train brought/brings was a relief of bus/coach traffic, and a substantial increase in facilitating movement between 'smaller' (though not small) cities that mainly don't have airports. Does the US have this layout or need? |