Only because US train system is biased toward freight.
Not complaining, it is what it is.
That said, I don’t see any pragmatic way to build passenger high-speed rail across the US. Every state would want it to run for them - otherwise they won’t support it. Then every city, etc.
Edit: for straight shots (point-to-point) across vast distances I don’t see train ever matching planes (like NY to LA)
NYC to LA is 4000km, so a dead straight non stop rail route operating at the current peak of high speed rail (200mph) would still take 12 hours. As soon as you pick a real route and stops and account for that speed being unrealistically expensive you’re looking at over 24h I think.
The annoying thing is that rail infrastructure is also expensive to maintain.
The US rail network is already kind of a disaster. A lot of major cities don’t even have passenger rail stations at all. There are entire STATES that don’t have a single amtrack station lol.
It would be most feasible to have like three high speed rails in the US. Up and down both coasts, and then east coast to west coast through the midwest, Denver, SLC etc.
That alone would be enough to replace a ton of car and plane trips, even if it didn’t provide service everywhere
Only because US train system is biased toward freight.
Not complaining, it is what it is.
That said, I don’t see any pragmatic way to build passenger high-speed rail across the US. Every state would want it to run for them - otherwise they won’t support it. Then every city, etc.
Edit: for straight shots (point-to-point) across vast distances I don’t see train ever matching planes (like NY to LA)
NYC to LA is 4000km, so a dead straight non stop rail route operating at the current peak of high speed rail (200mph) would still take 12 hours. As soon as you pick a real route and stops and account for that speed being unrealistically expensive you’re looking at over 24h I think.
The annoying thing is that rail infrastructure is also expensive to maintain.
24 hours isn’t bad, I took longer sleeper trains in China.
Well it’s not going to be faster than 6 hour plane though 🤔
The US rail network is already kind of a disaster. A lot of major cities don’t even have passenger rail stations at all. There are entire STATES that don’t have a single amtrack station lol.
Just for clarity, this map doesn’t show all Amtrak stations. The cities pictured are just the big ones on the routes
we’re planning on taking my MIL on a train from seattle to phoenix and this helps a lot.
It would be most feasible to have like three high speed rails in the US. Up and down both coasts, and then east coast to west coast through the midwest, Denver, SLC etc.
That alone would be enough to replace a ton of car and plane trips, even if it didn’t provide service everywhere
We can’t even build a single HSR line anywhere in the US
We’re a long ways away from being able to even think about trans-continental HSR
We simply do not have the competence to do it