> Thus assuming that the existing distance you mention is
> not shortened by new tracks, and that the average Acela
> speed cannot be upgraded to that of Thalyss, that still
> gives us 595/80=12 hours between Chicago and NYC.
Er ... you're forgetting the rest of my post: 6 x 160mi is not necessarily the same as 960 miles; and in the particular case of Chicago->NYC, it's certainly not, because of geography. You simply can't go 120mph up (or worse, down!) the grade that's found in Pennsylvania in a train.
> In the same vein, there is nothing that would prevent building
> tracks along I-5 (which runs across a rather flat terrain for
> the most part) and thus reduce travel speed.
... except for geography! Getting from the flat I-5 corridor to anywhere interesting (say, San Francisco in the middle of the state, or Los Angeles in the southern part) requires traversing mountains that can't be taken at speed. What you're proposing is 15-second-analysis of the "easy part" of building a high speed rail line: the flat, straight part. Getting past the Grapevine or Tehachapi is MOST of the engineering effort of a high speed rail link to Los Angeles; similarly the Altamont Pass is the big problem in getting to SF.
> The bottom line is, Jordan, that political pork can travel
> much further in explaining the current shape of the US
> transportation system than any cost/benefit or geography
> consideration.
That's funny, I'd say that pork has more to do with the current Amtrak route map than any other consideration; places like West Virginia and Montana are stuffed with Amtrak services serving very few people.
http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/factsheets/WESTVIRGINIA02.pdf
At least $1.8M for 42,000 pax ... nice.
---
Anyway, you started this by saying that Chicago->NYC would be a good route for trains (it's not: it's way too far); then you said that they can compete on short routes (and neglected to cite the successes of this), and wound up with a general screed against pork. Ok, whatever.
> If it were otherwise, how come that nobody else but the
> US-ers insist on implementing it, and everyone
> else sticks to the old fashioned and "inefficient" trains?
I'm not gonna fall for that trolling; it's been covered here before ... I gotta get those archives up next! :-)
/jordan