If it takes more than 4-6 hours to drive there, high speed rail is the clear choice. Iβm someone who has been on several 10+ hour road trips, and driving for more than a few hours at a time sucks. You waste up to an entire day just driving. Even if it does take the same amount of time, itβd be nice to nap or read a book in that time instead of focusing on just driving. Itβs mentally and physically exhausting.
Especially I-70 in western Kansas and eastern Colorado.
The furthest Iβve driven in one day was about 9 hours to Edinburgh. Our trains over here are stupid expensive so it worked out much cheaper. But damn I regretted it big time around hour 4 when I realised I wasnβt even half way.
No way man, Iβve ridden the train London to the UK. Itβs expensive in the sense that a first class ticket for me was β¦ 200 pounds I believe? Amtrak is gobs more for a much worse experience. Weβre fighting tooth and nail over here in the states to try to have something close to your system
Not tried rail in the USA so yeah, fair enough. But Iβve been to Italy a few times and Iβm always jealous of their rail.
Except in most of the (non-New England) US. San Antonio to Dallas by car is 4-5 hours. By train itβs 10-11 because it has to constantly pull over for the freight trains that own the tracks. The US only has about 100 miles of HSR for the whole country.
I think they meant it more in a βhigh speed rail would work better in these situations if we had itβ rather than βwe totally have that infrastructure in place letβs use itβ. That was my read anyway. Plus, my understanding is that what we consider HSR here barely even qualifies as such in other parts of the world.
Itβs all electric now and you can only hear the electric motor and the wheel grinding the rail, so train these day are more like
WwwoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
REEEEEEEEEEEEE
I want more trains because I think being a train robber is cool and I want more opportunities to become one.
On a completely unrelated note, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaCZ5QzTlFw
I like trains because they are much more comfortable than airplanes (especially with TSA gymnastics) and I can do something interesting or productive rather than try to focus on the road for hours on end.