electricron wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 10:40 pm I'm sorry, 90 mph maximum speeds is just not worth the expense with such tiny time savings, imho.You forget the TSA two-hour checkpoint penalty, plus the need to get to an airport and then to your destination in the first place... and the "quality of life" factor. I could go on, but needless to say I've had 45 minute flights that were really 4 hour trips of mostly waiting.
Why take a 6 hour train when you can fly it in less than an hour and a half, or less than 90 minutes?
BTW, you double track so that you can still be moving while you're going around that insane three mile long freight train that Union Pacific keeps running because they're too cheap to make three mile long siding for it where it meets an Amtrak and would rather delay the passenger train three hours. In which case, you have to make it expensive not to double track.