Actually, I think I did respond to that. But I'll summarize:
- The US has only a few examples of decent-length routes where "geography permits it" and they largely have (Amtrak) trains there: the NEC, the Bay Area, Southern California, Chicago-St. Louis, the Pacific Northwest. This forms the core of Amtrak's reasonable service. Amtrak loses money on the rest of the network (plus some for general incompetence, but I digress).
- There are a significant number of areas in the US where commuter rail networks are thick: New Jersey/Long Island/Connecticut, Northern Ilinois, Boston, LA (MetroLink).
Railroads in the US built routes everywhere it made sense (and a lot of places where it didn't) long before cars were invented or airplanes took over the medium-to-long haul routes. These rail lines are largely intact today.
> geography is far more important in freight rail than in passenger
> rail, because passenger trains can negotiate much steeper grades
> than the freight trains can.
But still not nearly as steep as trucks, witness the (multi-year) hub-bub in California about crossing the grapevine. The California high-speed rail fiasco should convince you that the US is different.
> This why TGV was build as an exclusively passenger line ...
Ahem, there are dedicated TGV trainsets for moving mail -- uh, cargo.
---
Joanna writes:
> I should be able to get on a bullet train from SF in the
> morning and get to NY the next morning. In a comfortable six
> seater/couchette, I should have myself a great day meeting
> people, chatting, reading a book, then have a great 8-hour sleep,
> and then arrive in New York fresh and rested.
And while you're at it, I'd like a pony, too! :-)
By the way, have you ever spent 24 hours on a train? I've done overnight trips of 15+ hours in Europe, even on 'luxury' trains, and you don't arrive fresh and rested. You arrive cranky and rumpled.
But okay, I'll bite. That's about 2600 air miles, or 2900 on the Interstate. Let's say they build a (non-stop?) dedicated train line that's 3000 miles long, just for you. Disregarding timezones, you want a 24 hour trip. That's an average of 125mph. Never mind that "San Francisco" doesn't have regular long-haul rail service because of a quirk of geography: the "trans-continental railroad" terminated in Oakland. But I suspect that's okay with you :-)
The longest high-speed rail lines I could find are all in the ~500 mile range. Paris -> Nice is 425 air miles, about 6 hours; Hamburg -> Munich is 380 air miles, about 6 hours, etc: these longer-distance trains all average under 100mph, presuming their routes are anywhere close to "straight" which I doubt they are. The fastest revenue-service trains in the world tend to be short, non-stop links. Of the top-10, almost all of the "fastest" routes are less than 300km (about 180mi); the AVE line from Seville to Madrid (470km) is a notable standout: it is the 4th fastest at this point, with an average speed of about 200km/hr (120mph, non-stop). Even though it's "top speed" is 300km/hr, it's average speed is MUCH less: and it's a "best case" because of the length of (the non-stop portion of) the trip.
SF-NYC is 10x that distance, and includes crossing: the Sierra Nevada; the Rockies; and the Appalachian Mountains: some of the worst mountains for crossing by rail. You'd have to have several crew sets for such a long ride (FRA rules -- and common sense!) probably limit you to 10hrs/shift. An interesting datapoint is the "fastest freight train" service, which for a long time was intermodal service from LA->Chicago ... at it's peak, they averaged a 40 hour trip for the ~2200 miles. They don't run it anymore, but they did some test runs in the ~35 hour range by pulling out all the stops. Nothing anywhere in the world comes close to this.
In short, you're dreaming.
> I fly to NY fairly often ...
Hey, me too! And a lot of other places, too ...
> ... and although the flight is six hours -- by the time I get to
> the airport, wait at the airport, board the plane, wait for takoff,
> land, get off the plane, get baggage, and get from the airport to
> the hotel
(Now you know why a "300km/hr train" averages 200km/hr in the best case!)
> -- i have spent twelve hours travelling and it has all been
> EXCRUCIATING.
I think you're exagerating. Here's a trip-log from my last flight:
Local Zulu What 09:30 1630Z Leave home 10:20 1720Z Arrive SFO (faster to OAK!) 11:15 1815Z Depart SFO 19:45 2345Z Arrive JFK 20:45 0045Z Arrive hotel (midtown, via taxi)
That's a little over 8 hours, not anywhere near 12. FWIW, that's an average of over 330 mph including transfers, which is WAY faster than the TEST TRACK speed record of any fast train. By the way, the trip in from JFK is about the same as it is into Paris from CDG, London from Heathrow, Madrid, Berlin, and a half-dozen other major European cities.
12 hours door-to-door gets me to Paris, FWIW.
> And when I get to NY I am exhausted and irritated.
You need to lighten up a little bit, maybe have a cocktail, enjoy a satelite movie or something :-)
> Right now I pay 350 round trip on Jet Blue.
And that's an incredible 7.5 miles per dollar. Yes, that's less than half the price of what the IRS allows for auto reimbursements. And service from a profitable airline, no less. Such a screaming deal! I hope you sit in the back: 2" more pitch than the front.
On the other hand, if you do it often enough, it would pay to fly United (PS service, the only product out there that is flying the Way It Ought To Be) out of SFO, rack up some miles, and upgrade.
> I would pay double that to do it comfortably on a train.
I'm sure you would! Hah, good luck!
Seville to Madrid (let's call it 1/10 your journey) is about the same cost as the cheapest one-way on JetBlue. A train like the AVE if it went SFO-NYC would likely be at least 10x the price, if you could get someone to build such a weird thing -- who would pay for a non-stop train from San Francisco to New York?
Would you pay triple to do it (beyond) comfortably on a plane? You mentioned $350 r/t, which is the cheapest Jet Blue will do it for you; with similar planning ahead, you can get UA/PS business class tickets for about $1200 r/t, and that gives you 54" pitch (yes, 20" more than 'normal coach'), free drinks, and a meal. A real meal.
/jordan