Exactly, but so long as AMTRAK is in charge of managing this it will never happen. Acela had the potential to steal massive amounts of travel from the airlines. If you could do Boston to NYC in 2 hours by train it would be faster/cheaper than flying.
Its the politics and half-assed shortcuts that are preventing it. Would it take financial capital to start up? Sure. But if done RIGHT it would return on its investment pretty quickly. However Amtrak is constantly doing it wrong. They need a dedicated line, with maybe 2 inter city stops. The train needs to run full out the entire time its not stopped. I'm not 100% certain of the route Acela uses, but if it stopped once in RI and once in CT you could be doing 150mph the entire time in between. Even at $100 per ticket thats far better than flying. How many Boston to NY flights are their daily?
In general the US just has a broken view of how train infrastructures should work. The best model for a place like the US is a hub system. You designate major metros that have inter city traffic as hubs (NYC, Boston, DC, Philly) You run limited highspeed inter city trains between them. Dedicated lines for the majority/all of the trip. Once a person gets to the city they can use conventional rail to travel to surrounding areas if they so choose. Having intercity trains slowed waiting on local traffic or making local stops is just a terrible idea.
I ran an itinerary of a Boston to LA train trip on Amtrak and the number of stops was just silly. Amtrak just needs to realize its cheaper to ignore some areas and improve travel times and they will be able to be competitive with airlines. If I could do Boston or NYC to Chicago with say 4-5 stops Same thing for Boston->NYC->DC, and be able to do it at 150mph on average, then $100/ticket 1 way would be more than reasonable, considering you'd be looking at double that for a plan ticket.
As mentioned in one of the above posts, the key is flight time + airport time + 20% > train time between 2 cities. The 20% makes up for the fact that people will consider slightly longer for a significant savings in cost.
Not quite. Unfortunately, the infrastructure for 150 mph trains simply does not exist south of NYC. The Northeast Corridor is not a dedicated high-speed rail line, at least not in the European or Japanese sense. The actual track was built in the late 19th century. The overhead wiring is original from the 1930s. The only 150mph track is the brand new line from NYC to Boston. Below NYC, everything is rated for 100mph or less, with a few stretches of 125mph near Philly. Around Baltimore it is really bad, limited to 45mph. It's not as though one can simply make the trains tilt, they'll still derail. (also, the Acela trains were built 4 inches too wide, so if their tilting functionality was used to its full extent, it would smash into stuff on the side of the tracks.) There is essentially no room to straighten the track or to build new dedicated lines anywhere in the Northeast.
Also, Amtrak shares this track with New Jersey Transit, SEPTA (commuter trains in PA), MARC rail (Maryland commuter trains), and freight trains, none of which have priority over the Acela, but which still cause delays simply due to the fact that two trains cannot occupy the same track at the same time.
Couple that to the fact that Amtrak is required by the US government to keep all their unprofitable trains and hence has absolutely no money, and it's surprising that they can get the trains out at all. 1930s trackage and corrupt government management do not a high speed rail line make.
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Exactly, but so long as AMTRAK is in charge of managing this it will never happen. Acela had the potential to steal massive amounts of travel from the airlines. If you could do Boston to NYC in 2 hours by train it would be faster/cheaper than flying.
Its the politics and half-assed shortcuts that are preventing it. Would it take financial capital to start up? Sure. But if done RIGHT it would return on its investment pretty quickly. However Amtrak is constantly doing it wrong. They need a dedicated line, with maybe 2 inter city stops. The train needs to run full out the entire time its not stopped. I'm not 100% certain of the route Acela uses, but if it stopped once in RI and once in CT you could be doing 150mph the entire time in between. Even at $100 per ticket thats far better than flying. How many Boston to NY flights are their daily?
In general the US just has a broken view of how train infrastructures should work. The best model for a place like the US is a hub system. You designate major metros that have inter city traffic as hubs (NYC, Boston, DC, Philly) You run limited highspeed inter city trains between them. Dedicated lines for the majority/all of the trip. Once a person gets to the city they can use conventional rail to travel to surrounding areas if they so choose. Having intercity trains slowed waiting on local traffic or making local stops is just a terrible idea.
I ran an itinerary of a Boston to LA train trip on Amtrak and the number of stops was just silly. Amtrak just needs to realize its cheaper to ignore some areas and improve travel times and they will be able to be competitive with airlines. If I could do Boston or NYC to Chicago with say 4-5 stops Same thing for Boston->NYC->DC, and be able to do it at 150mph on average, then $100/ticket 1 way would be more than reasonable, considering you'd be looking at double that for a plan ticket.
As mentioned in one of the above posts, the key is flight time + airport time + 20% > train time between 2 cities. The 20% makes up for the fact that people will consider slightly longer for a significant savings in cost.
Not quite. Unfortunately, the infrastructure for 150 mph trains simply does not exist south of NYC. The Northeast Corridor is not a dedicated high-speed rail line, at least not in the European or Japanese sense. The actual track was built in the late 19th century. The overhead wiring is original from the 1930s. The only 150mph track is the brand new line from NYC to Boston. Below NYC, everything is rated for 100mph or less, with a few stretches of 125mph near Philly. Around Baltimore it is really bad, limited to 45mph. It's not as though one can simply make the trains tilt, they'll still derail. (also, the Acela trains were built 4 inches too wide, so if their tilting functionality was used to its full extent, it would smash into stuff on the side of the tracks.) There is essentially no room to straighten the track or to build new dedicated lines anywhere in the Northeast. Also, Amtrak shares this track with New Jersey Transit, SEPTA (commuter trains in PA), MARC rail (Maryland commuter trains), and freight trains, none of which have priority over the Acela, but which still cause delays simply due to the fact that two trains cannot occupy the same track at the same time. Couple that to the fact that Amtrak is required by the US government to keep all their unprofitable trains and hence has absolutely no money, and it's surprising that they can get the trains out at all. 1930s trackage and corrupt government management do not a high speed rail line make.