[brewdad]

Outside the Acela corridor is there a passenger train that achieves that in the US? Maybe the new Brightline. I've ridden the Amtrak Cascades quite a bit between Portland and Seattle. It's a scheduled 3.5 hour ride that usually takes closer to 4 hours. Driving takes 3 hours if you're lucky usually closer to 3.5, although I had a 5 hour return trip by car from Seattle one time when I left at 4pm on a Friday.

Point is, Cascades is one of the better services outside the NE corridor and it still tops out at only 75mph (120km/h). The average trip speed is closer to 50mph (80km/h).

We have a long way to go to achieve anything resembling European levels of service. Japanese levels feel like an impossibility.