[thedogeye]

America is just too big for trains. In europe you don't take a train between large countries. I tried to take a train from Madrid to Paris it was going to be like 11 hours while the flight was 2. Nobody does this. Trains are useful for within a country, which in the US is like traveling within a given state. Sure we could invest a lot in that. But the idea that people are going to cross the country on a train is idiotic.

[dylan-m]

America is too big for planes, too. If your transportation solution is flying, now everyone has to get around via endless highways or big, complicated regional airports, and you can only have so many of those. There's a reason why rural areas in North America have completely different politics from urban areas, and why so much of it is driven by a sense of isolation and abandonment. Trains promise to help here because they are able to stop in small places that will never, ever have practical airports.

A good rail network provides a reliable, consistent, repeatable, and straightforward three hour connection from Nowheresberg to the nearest city. Slow, but good enough to feel like they exist in the same planet. Unfortunately, that promise is subtle, and it plays out over decades, so the reward system we've created for ourselves is incapable of supporting it. And thus, we have Amtrak and confederate flags.

[rglullis]

There is no such thing as a two-hour flight. Once you account for drive to airport/check-in/security/boarding/deboarding/luggage/drive from airport, a two hour flight has become a six-hour journey.

And between a completely stressful six hour journey and an overnight train where I can go to sleep in one city center and wake up in another, guess which one is more practical?

[rangestransform]

that still isn't a good reason to not build a 500kph maglev along the northeast corridor