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To be fair though, he was talking about one city pairing, but Northeast and Acela cover a much longer route with multiple metros and many more city pairing combinations.
In my experience, Acela is about 90% business travelers, the regional service is about a 50/50 split between business and recreational travelers, and Bolt/Megabus are about 90% recreational travelers.
The Acela is the busiest because it's in the most populated corridor, and it's the only high-speed rail in the country. Amtrak might as well not exist outside of the Northeast Corridor.
All total, I spent about 25 years living in NYC, in various stages of my life. I visited Philadelphia and Boston once each, during that time period. No when I noticed that those cities frequently. Proximity to those cities was not one of New York's selling points. Proximity to New York is a selling point for those cities.
So most people I know from
The Boston area have not been to NY once or twice. I would think it's roughly equal. I've been to several Sox games with Yankees Fans there who I'm sure aren't from Newton.
The fact is anything over 2.5 hours required a Hotel so most people will not frequent that place often.
In fact acedotally of the destinations about 4 hours from Boston, Downeast ME, Montreal, the Adirondacks and NYC for liesure travel NYC is probably the least popular.
Check out these figures on inter-city bus travel in 2014. These are stats for weekly ridership by route.
The highest ridership routes that year were (Table 26):
New York to Philadelphia - 44,269
New York to DC - 38,016
Boston to New York - 23,804
Baltimore to New York - 20,237
Boston to Portland - 11,236
Of the Top 20 routes, only 8 were outside of the Bos-Wash corridor, and none were in the Midwest.
Remember NY is a hub, as it's basically the geographic center of the Northeast. So Scranton or Bringhamton to Boston is via NYC, Albany or Utica to Philly as well. So it's not necessarily that City pair that's popular.
Part of that is because Chicago encourages construction and development and has the room to do so with fewer restrictions in place. Chicago has had an astounding amount of construction for a city that's not booming and I think that's been a strong driver in keeping housing costs down.
First of all, a lot (but definitely not all) of construction is happening downtown in Chicago which you could characterize as a booming part of a city. The greater downtown area (Near North, Near South, Near West, and the Loop) grew a combined 9.3% in population between 2010 and 2015. When 2016 data by tract comes out in a few months it'll be higher than that no doubt.
In any case, I think that the prices of the city have stayed fairly flat if you only look at it from the city level statistics. That much is true. However, right now if you know exactly what's going on you know it's completely tied to the area or region of the city. The truth is that most areas have seen growth since 2010 - with a few areas such as downtown as a handful of other neighborhoods seeing very healthy growth. Many others are seeing growth but nothing amazing. It's one section of town that is losing almost as much as fast growing downtown has gained, which offsets. Pretty much goes for the prices. However, in many areas, not just downtown - but ones like Logan Square that have seen a healthy amount of new construction - prices for older homes/condos has increased too. It hasn't kept them in check like you think they are.
None of those cities are "destination" cities. Maybe St. Louis.. but barely.
No one really cares about Milwaukee, and Indianapolis. Not places on most people's bucket list to visit before they die. People outside the U.S. probably don't even know those places exist lol.
You said absolutely nothing about "destination cities," and just about everything you just said about Milwaukee and Indianapolis could also be said about Detroit.
You said absolutely nothing about "destination cities," and just about everything you just said about Milwaukee and Indianapolis could also be said about Detroit.
I posted links that proves Milwaukee is a "destination" city. You can all ignore, if you want, but you would be wrong. I know it's not on people's bucket list, but it has something to offer.
Might it be the 'cachet' thing? SF and Seattle have high-tech pedigrees. LA is the entertainment hub of the planet. Boston has those prestigious universities. NYC has, well, pretty much everything.
I think people are defining "destination city" differently. No question Milwaukee has large scale events and a lot to offer. It's just that I think of San Fran, NYC, Chicago, Miami, etc. as destination cities. I'm not even sure I'd consider places like Boston or Philly as true destination cities in the more high-profile marketing sense. Although I would consider Philly and Boston much closer to that definition than Milwaukee, but that's another discussion.
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