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Five hours? Sounds excellent. The flight is a little over two now, plus airport arrival two hours before, etc. five hours sounds excellent. It can't be that good, it would have to be worse than that.
And it would be. The train would likely stop, at minimum, in Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Medford, and either Eureka or Redding. It would likely stop in about 10 or 20 other cities as well.
The TSA would be present at the train stations just like at the airports. The same "security" theater would take place.
It would probably take about 8-9 hours when all was said and done - minimum.
Ten or twenty other cities? Now you're pushing it. You've listed all the major cities already and some of the lesser cities. It's not like there is much between Olympia and Portland or Portland and Redding. Redding to SF and SF to San Jose where I would get off. I say...seven hours. And train rather than a flying tin can where I'm crammed so close I can tell what the next guy just ate. Ugh.
Ah, I can dream. I hate flying and I hate driving. I do a lot more of the former than the latter but would happily do without either.
How I would love to have HSR up and down the Eastern seaboard. Miami - Atlanta - Boston. 1,800 miles at 300 mph plus a few stops in between.... Instead, I'll keep on crawling up the interstate at 75 mph or find myself stuck at JFK for three hours while we drive around the tarmac.
And it would be. The train would likely stop, at minimum, in Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Medford, and either Eureka or Redding. It would likely stop in about 10 or 20 other cities as well.
The TSA would be present at the train stations just like at the airports. The same "security" theater would take place.
It would probably take about 8-9 hours when all was said and done - minimum.
The bottom line for comparison is, what it would take to go from Seattle to San Franciso, train vs plane even playing field, not that it doesn't make sense to add in additional cities. Actually, that is another selling point of rail, you can easily stop at other cities, not so with air travel, and trains are not stacked 15 to 20 in a row waiting for a runway to open up in addition to being less impacted by weather.
I just did some reading on Acela. Speeds of up to 150mph but averages 80mph. At that speed then yes you could have multiple stops along the way.
Then again the acela has speed restrictions on portions of the track.
As an interesting aside..they did a test run of limited stops with the Acela and shaved an hour off the time to get from NYC to Wash DC.
I guess stops are always a problem with high-speed trains. They cost a lot of time. Plus, they tend to be in or close to already existing cities, so the rail company can't build ideal, i.e. pretty straight tracks, separate from the conventional track network where freight and slower conventional trains are often stopping at smaller towns as well, slowing down the whole system. It's more like in one of those children's drawing books, where you have to connect countless points by drawing a line through them. Especially in the US, where the rail network is rather thin, you can't just get off the high-speed train in a huge city stop and take a connecting suburban train to the smaller city you actually need to go to.
Even from Seattle to San Francisco would be around 600 miles I believe. At 125 mph without stops (and there would be plenty of stops), that would take 5 hours.
How many stops do flights between Seattle to San Francisco must make?
How many stops do flights between Seattle to San Francisco must make?
That depends on if they fly you to chitown or atlanta first.
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