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0 pointschucksmash9y ago0 comments

This is exactly the thought that occurred to me, except for New York to Atlanta.

I've looked into taking the train a couple of times and balked each time at the idea of paying the same price for 10-15x the transit time. 40 hours in transit is going to be a non-starter for so many kinds of trips, unless you're specifically doing something like [1] where the transit is the whole point of the trip.

[1]: http://www.viarail.ca/en/explore-our-destinations/trains/roc...

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martinald9y ago

The thing is it is way more expensive to provide a train for 40 hours than a plane for 2. The plane could do 20 journeys in that time, for 20x the nominal revenue.

This is why high speed rail is so good: it can actually really decrease operational costs Vs normal rail as your train, crew, station etc does 2-3x the volume of passengers, and therefore revenue, compared to slower alternatives.

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