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I am in the 21%. Trains are a pain in the a*s. Trains are marginally convenient in congested, urban areas. Get outside of major metropolitan areas and they are a chore.
If they are so damn great, some business would have built it so satisfy all this "demand".
Rail travel is certainly more comfortable than air travel, but it is still impractical for most long-distance travel in the US. At 200 mph - the speed of the fastest current TGV train - a trip between, say, Minneapolis and Los Angeles would take at least ten hours, and that assuming that the train is non-stop, straight-through. In reality, with stops and all, you're looking at more like at least a day. Compare this to a little over four hours on a plane. This is precisely why budget airlines fare so well in Europe, which has high-speed rail already in place. To go from, say, London to Madrid would cost about $100 (with luggage) and take 2.5 hours by air; going the same route by train would take 24 hours and probably cost much, much more (I wasn't able to get a definite price, but my guess is that it would be at least $500).
Mass Transit Ridership has grow by 50% over the past year in some metros and the Northeast Corridor is now used by 730,000 people daily...which is supposed to double by 2030...
Primarily because the super-congested and downright dense Northeast is the only part of the country where HSR makes sense.
Geography and the topography of the land is the overriding factor, and especially when going from west to east; from a perspective of time, HSR loses by an enormous margin.
A nonstop flight from Panama City Beach, Fl. to Nashville on Southwest is scheduled for 80 minutes, but routinely takes 50-55 minutes tops @500+ MPH.
Flights from LA to Phoenix on Southwest which are scheduled for 75 minutes have repeatedly taken me anywhere from 48-52 minutes from takeoff to touchdown, and I get to LAX one hour before my flight, and have never had a problem in catching my plane thanks to their advance check-in procedures.
HSR only works in very dense parts of the country; it wouldn't work from Chicago-NYC any better than it would work from DC to anywhere besides the Northeast.
Dallas to Houston (downtown to downtown) is about 260 miles. A train averaging 150 mph would cover the distance in 1 hour and 45 minutes. Add another 45 minutes to check-in and get out. The entire journey complete in 2 hours and 30 minutes... quicker and in a lot more comfort than airplanes.
Mass Transit Ridership has grow by 50% over the past year in some metros and the Northeast Corridor is now used by 730,000 people daily...which is supposed to double by 2030...
and we should hit 400 million population before 2030
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