[tsotha]

On the west coast Amtrak is more of an amusement park ride than a practical transportation option. If you want to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles the Amtrak trip planner has you on two trains and two buses before you arrive after nine hours. If you want to take a train the whole way there's only one each day and it takes 12 hours (as compared to about 6.5 driving).

It's kind of a joke. We should either get serious about a rail system or kill Amtrak altogether.

[orbifold]

Well a high speed rail like the TGV going ~300-350km/h would cut that down to roughly 2.5 hours, admittedly that is still higher than going by air, but a lot better than 12 hours.

[tsotha]

Flying isn't any faster than 2.5 hours once you figure in the extra time at the airport.

In any event I would be happy to take a conventional train if took less than about eight hours. I don't like flying and the drive is grueling, particularly in traffic.

The problem is AFAIK Amtrak doesn't own any track on the west coast. It's all single track, routing is optimized for freight, and passenger trains have a lower priority than freight trains.