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Comment by davedx | Hacker News Reader

Wow. In the Netherlands, intercity trains can go up to 135 km/h (83 mph), and they’ve successfully increased the frequency of these trains on some lines this year. Suffice to say with Dutch population density, the train network is also quite dense. Quite an achievement I think.

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The MTA subway isn't really intercity, unless you think of the boroughs as different cities. Although the express trains should be able to go much faster than they do, like the A from 59 St to 125 St, which takes ~8 minutes for 5.3 km even though there are no stops and no other trains on the track.

This kind of thing makes a huge impact on the quality of life for people living in the city.

For intercity trains in the Netherlands some stops are only kilometers apart as well. 50 kilometers between stops would be the absolute maximum.

Yeah. The larger point is still that you just can’t compare IC trains to subways. The TGV gets to 300km/h+, but it’s irrelevant to the Disneyland Monorail.

Many of the subway stops in Manhattan are only hundreds of meters apart, so it is still an order of magnitude of difference.

A closer parallel might be the London Underground, that manages 55-60mph.

The new Elizabeth line is apparently going to go up to 90 miles per hour, but that is probably only for when the train leaves London and heads out to neighbouring towns (it's essentially a subway line that also connects commuter towns to London).

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