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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Imagine how great the US would be if instead of letting one industry (air) monopolize travel, we'd invested in rail infrastructure.

I miss when I was based in the UK for work. I zoomed all over the place via trains. It was like a 3.5 hour trip to go from Paris to Frankfurt and around 2 hours from London to Paris.

We're somewhat lucky on the East Coast in that Amtrak can get you up in the NE corridor relatively quickly, but going to the SE? Those are long, long trips like around 17-20 hours. And going West? Forget that unless you get a sleeper room, which is now sometimes running more expensive than a flight due to the popularity from all the videos the travel influencers have pushed out over the last few years. [/quote]

Ever ridden the high speed rail from Madrid to Barcelona?  The high speed TGV train in France?  The bullet train in Japan?

They planned it, paid for it, implemented and are using it.  Japan had high speed rail back in the early 70s.

We paid for it again and again.  We got NOTHING except committees, "studies", and lawyers getting rich.  California High Speed Rail has been 3 decades in the making and zippy to show for.

BTW, Amtrak has lost money every year since it began.[/quote]

DP Amtrak is controlled by Congress. This forces Amtrak to keep money losing routes open in rural states. In addition these long distance routes are very expensive to operate and lose money- Sunset Limited, Southwest Chief, and Empire Builder. Those need to be closed.

The northeast corridor makes a lot of money for Amtrak but Congress does not allow Amtrak to improve the system. If Amtrak was allowed to run as a private company we would have high speed trains(most likely maglev)from Boston to DC. DC to New York would be one hour, Boston to New York 40 minutes, Philadelphia to New York 25 minutes. High speed trains also make sense on the West coast.

The big benefit would be relieving the overcrowded air traffic in the northeast. The northeast air traffic corridor accounts for 60-80% of the delays nation wide for air travel. That two hour delay in Dallas was most likely caused by delays out of a NE airport.[/quote]

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