> Nobody is saying that a train can go as fast as a plane.
Um, that's exactly what Gar said:
>> But when you add in time waiting for gates, waiting for
>> landing strips and so on, total journey time will be comparable
>> to air travel even for 2,000 or 3,000 mile trips.
...
> A TGV traveling at it stop speed can get from DC to NYC in about an
> hour
No, it can't. There are no examples in the world today of a 200+ mile city center to city center scheduled train that takes "about an hour" ... the fastest scheduled link in SNCF's timetable is Lille to CDG (basically nowhere to nowhere, on a dedicated track) and it's like 130 miles in about 50 minutes -- a little under 160 mph average. A more useful example is Paris-Lyon. But I'm repeating myself: I've posted the facts on this issue before, and I even gave them to you in my last message.
> it highly unlikely that an ordinary citizen can fly from downtown DC
> to
> downtown Manhattan in less than three hours.
I'm must be an extrordinary citizen, then, as are hundreds of people each day. I did this in November (from my notes):
0740 Left hotel, midtown Manhattan 0805 Arrive LGA 0830 Scheduled Delta Shuttle departure 0843 Actual departure 0926 Arrival DCA 0939 Metro/Yellow Line 0951 Arrive L'Enfant Plaza
The 0800 Acela departure arrives Union Station at 1045 ... air is still very competitive in the NYC-DC corridor. With a Paris-Lyon style train, you'd be in the ballpark with air. This is precisely why the wildly successful train has only captured 50% of the traffic on that route.
> The reason why we have no high velocity trains in the US (Acela is
> only a
> poor cousin of TGV) in purely political and has everything to do with
> the
> power of the lobbyists for airlines and auto industry and little to do
> with
> technology or geography.
You have this exactly backwards.
---
I'm a big train fan, but please don't exagerate.
/jordan