NYC to Boston is 230 miles, about 3.5 hours by "fast" train. It's about an hour flight. A lot of people still take the train.
If you can get the trains to take you directly into the city center, it can often be a better option.
If you can get the trains to take you directly into the city center, it can often be a better option.
That means I leave for the airport 75 minutes before my flight, fly for 1 hour, arrive in JFK/LGA/EWR, and then take about 30-40 minutes of public transit to my destination in Manhattan. And that's the ideal.
There's some break-even point for travelers between the more relaxed pace of train travel as opposed to the efficiency of air travel, but BOS - NYC is still within the realm of the train, even at Amtrak speeds.
That's because Boston and NYC are both navigable without a car. Only one side of the SF-LA link can claim to be close to that ideal.
But the time and hassle of airport parking and security and delays might be able to keep a 3.5 hour train ride viable even in CA. That would require a train system that allowed passengers to step through a quick scanner with no line and onto the train without queueing or carefully organized boarding. Lots of train systems used to do that in the USA but the bureaucrats don't like passengers freely walking around platforms by heavy machinery or directing themselves or quick predictable security procedures. Acela has been abandoning efficient and established traditional practices to copy instead the airports. How long are they going to stand for a train system that isn't as awful as airport security and boarding?
Since politicians can't risk being blamed for trouble, we have no ability to control the bureaucrats and every high speed transportation system will inevitably get to be as bad as airports.
If rail could be built at the same costs as in France or Japan (or even, optimistically, Spain or Korea), to wit, $20-30MMM, you could justify it just for saving the cost of airport expansion. But at $80-120MMM it's lunacy to proceed.
You'd have to actually change the rules and overcome the NIMBYs. Some problems can't be solved with cash.
Just put some car rental places near the station in LA, just like is done for airports.
If the answer to arriving in LA is "you need to rent a car in any case" (which it often will be), then you lose one area of train potential advantage.
I avoid flying like the plague but I'll do it if morning meeting and can't go down night before.