Originally Posted by
tallpilot
Not that I like competition but I wonder if more elements of the passenger rail network had reasonable service times if it could be more viable. It works in the northeast because the transit times are reasonable.
Hamburg to Munich is about 5 hours by train. New York to Chicago is about 50% farther but that train is 23 hours instead of 8. Of course that's because it's mandated to stop in every town with a population over 50 and probably because the track speed is 35 mph half the time.
For all the whining about airline bailouts, Amtrak has been on the dole since Nixon was president.
Rail in the US is inherently limited by our vast distances relative to other places where it is more successful.
Travel time can be improved by speed, but that requires new infrastructure which is hard for several reasons...
1) Vast distances mean vast expense. That could be overcome with enough money, but it would be a LOT of money.
2) Fast trains need fairly straight rail lines. Either they'd have to drill through some big mountain ranges ($$$$$) or go the long way around. The latter would increase cost and travel time.
3) NIMBY. Existing rail lines have right-of-way going back as far two centuries. New lines would need new right-of-way. The locals won't like it one bit, especially the one's who will lose their homes. This nation doesn't have the political guts to force the imminent domain issue on that large of a scale, for a dubious benefit in the first place. If limited to existing right-of-ways in populated areas, fast trains would have to slow down to handle the curves (and possibly noise).
So even if you overcome all of that, a 200mph train that could in theory do a transcon in 11 hours is probably going to have to go the long way around some terrain and urban areas, and slow down for others. Not even counting planned stops along the way, your're easily pushing 20 hours NY-LA.
Airplane infrastructure at least already exists, with established right of ways (and the air is free with zero mx costs).
Also... there's the security issue. A 200+ mph train has a lot of 1/2MV^2. How do you keep it safe? With the plane you screen everything that gets on board and then once you leave the gate nothing can really touch you. For a train, you'd have to secure every inch of a high-speed rail. And if you didn't, the bad guys would see it to it soon enough. $$$$$$