[gaadd33]

To fly from NYC to Philly will take at least an hour on the plane, plus about an hour to go from Manhattan to the airport, plus 30 mins or so to go from the Philadelphia Airport to Philadelphia...the train takes an hour and departs/drops you in the center of both cities. How is that technologically obsolete?

[bombcar]

Short-range intercity can be usable, but cross-country travel in the USA is honestly just impractical by rail. Should it be kept operational? Certainly! Should it be seriously considered as a competitor for airlines? Unlikely.

The only way it will come back is if the intercity travel keeps getting better and better, and even then routes on the coast may work but once you hit the midwest the distances get unreasonably far.

Chicago to Los Angeles would be ten hours at Nozomi speeds assuming zero stops. Even the proposed California high-speed corridor doesn't have much to offer.

[ghaff]

Anything you turn from a 2-3 hour flight into an 8-10+ (especially overnight) train trip has pretty much lost you every business traveler--and lots of others as well, particularly if it isn't any cheaper.

[gaadd33]

Oh I agree, it's a regional thing and not cross country (at least this country). It should connect metro regions and maybe have some long thin routes between those.

For California if they could do SF to LA in ~3 hours, that would be a huge change since the current drive is about twice that (and extremely boring from my drive last week). LA to Vegas is another route that should exist given the massive amount of 45 minute flights and cars that already do that.

[bombcar]

Before we try to do SF to LA in ~3 hours, let's get LA to SD down from 3 hours (this seems to have improved about 10 minutes in 20 years).

[kevin_thibedeau]

You don't have to even look that far afield. I did a ride between NY Penn and Rochester NY that took longer than the 6 hour drive because of delays.

[bombcar]

Heh I remember transiting Chi-town to PA and getting stuck waiting for the Late for Sure Limited (Lakeshore Limited).

Personally I'd rather have a slow train that kept schedule than a fast train that rarely did.