> I think you missed my point, Jordan.
Maybe. You said that if Amtrak were properly funded, you could go Chicago to New York in 12 hours, something that no railroad in the world could do. I showed that even in wonderous socialist train-centered Europe, a similar distance is covered in about 17 hours, very close to what it was like in the 40s in the US on that route, and not all that better than what Amtrak currently does.
> To illustrate - the distance from NYC to Chicago is 787 miles
Not according to my rail maps it isn't! It's 959 on the current Amtrak route, and about 902 on the earlier Penn route (but that has the Horseshoe Curve to deal with, which is why it wasn't a clear advantage over the NYC).
> and driving time (according to Yahoo map service) is
> 12 hours and 6 minutes
... if you drive it non-stop. Which I doubt :-)
Cars/trucks can climb/descend grades that trains can't. It's not fair to compare distance by car and distance by train.
> Trains can go much faster than
> that, Acela reaches about 140 mph.
But only in certain places where the track is clean and flat. So compare to TGV where the rail is clean and flat and dedicated, and you still don't see "average time" anywhere near "top speed" -- it just doesn't work that way. Paris to Dijon, about 160 miles, takes about 1:40 which works out to be about 100mph on average. Even the latest Thalys (Paris-Brussels) is 160mi in 1:25 or 112mph average. Acelas do NYP-Washington (222 miles) in just about 2:45 which is 80mph, still much faster than your mythical 65mph car.
> Thus assuming average speed 120 mph, the 787 mile distance
> between Chicago and NYC could be covered in about
> 7 hours.
Here's some history on "high speed trains" on that run:
http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r016.html
A big part of the problem of Chicago->NYC is the geography, and that doesn't get solved by TGV-style technology or spending. You simply couldn't put a train on I-80 ...
> I am not saying there is no service, but that the service
> is painfully slow. Takes the whole day (11 hours) to get to
> from SJ to LA by train, and about 5-6 hours to drive.
Indeed, because of the geography. But SJ->LA is a bad example, because a) it's very far (nearly 400 miles) and b) it is a once-daily tourist train, not actual transportation. It's like flying SFO-ORD in a DC-3 "for the thrill of it" and it's disingenuous of you to use it as an example of "transport" ...
> I do not think Amtrak has any worse on-time record than most
> airlines and certainly much better than Greyhound.
Well, _something_ is going on.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3251857
>> So you're all for fully funding Amtrak?
>
> Yes. Emphatically.
It sounds to me from everything you've said so far [ modulo the exagerations ;-) ] that you'd be in favor of the current proposal to break up Amtrak and put more emphasis on coridor services, while dropping the (slow, tourist-style -- though the California Zephyr does the 2436 miles from Chicago to Emeryville in a respectible 53 hours which is about 50mph, much faster than you'd want to drive, though longer than what a team-trucker would do) long-distance daily services.
> The taxpayer would get a much greater bang for their buck by
> subsidizing rail than by subsidizing freeways.
The biggest benefit of highway subsidation is found in lower consumer prices; team driven trucks beat (in time and price) even the fastest cargo trains between Chicago and LA (and certainly do much better on the shorter hops!). So what's this bank-for-the-buck calculation you're doing?
/jordan