• AA5B@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    That’s not even a fair comparison.

    That train would be well worth having

    • for the huge number of people making intermediate trips on the line
    • the smaller number of people going the distance
    • the huge number of cars that could take off the roads
    • each airplane it can replace

    Every time someone brings this up they don’t seem to realize that the full distance is made up of many segments of many lengths. Even here in the Northeast, it’s not especially common for people to take Acela the full distance Boston to DC. However trains are full from the segments. I would never again travel Boston—>NYC another way. Someone else feels the same about Philadelphia—>NYC, or Philadelphia—>DC. And you can say similar about all the other stops. There’s a huge value in serving a long route, even if it is to serve all the segments and few people go the distance

    A commonly used rule of thumb is high speed intercity trains can be the most convenient choice between cities up to 500 miles apart. For longer distances flying would be faster. However most cities are within 500 miles of another city and the “network effect” of connecting the dots is huge

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      The train would be great. The prompt was cross country for a weekend trip. All of your responses fail to realize the prompt. If it isn’t over 1000 miles, there is no way it’s cross country in our country. The weekend is 2 days.