Comment by SJC_Hacker
2 days ago
> But for flights that don't span water, my understanding is that it's almost certain that a train system is far superior.
I'll assume you are speaking theoretically, as the inter-city train system in the US is mostly a joke except for some very specific routes (such as NYC-Philly-Baltimore-DC)
Even in an ideal world, a coast-to-coast train express train in the US is going to be way slower than flying. If time isn't a major consideration or is "downtime" anyway, such as a overnight sleeper train than it might be somewhat better, but chances of that ever getting built are essentially zero in a world where we can't even connect two major cities on one coast.
Agreed, a good passenger train system in the US won't happen in our lifetimes.
It's frustrating to contemplate what could have been.
What could have been? How could you build a train system from say, Denver to Los Angeles, Miami to New Orleans, Chicago to Dallas, that could be less than 3-4x the flight time and have enough passengers to be remotely economical (not necessarily profitable, just not a massive drain)?