Originally Posted by
rickair7777
Airlines gave up on multi-stop flights a long time ago because pax don't have the patience for it. Nobody doing DC to ORD wants to stop at 27 small towns along the way. Defeats the point of "High Speed".
It REALLY does defeat high speed. On my last (and if I have anything to do with it FINAL) Amtrak experience we stopped at dozens of little whistlestops to drop off or pick up one to three passengers. Having to bring a million pound train to a complete stop and then reaccelerate it took enough energy to more than offset the putative efficiency of rail travel, while every smoker aboard jumped out to get a “quick” smoke, oftentimes delaying their boarding to the point where we missed our “slot” between north and southbound trains traveling on the same rails and had to sit along a siding.
We were 14 hours late on what was advertised as a 23 hour trip.
What makes high speed rail work - in the countries it does work - is nonstop travel between exceedingly large and population dense city centers that are within a few hundred miles of each other up far enough apart to make the speed necessary. We simply don’t have that here.