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Comment by jnw2 | Hacker News Reader

Most parts of the world have found that the current three hours from DC to NYC is already short enough to eliminate the flights except for people connecting to other flights. However, Amtrak doesn't have enough seats to absorb all the airline shuttle passengers.

The really interesting thing about a 90 minute or better Boston to New York City trip is that it opens up the possibility of daily commuting. It would also have the potential to add places like Springfield and Hartford to the set of suburbs of Boston and Manhattan. But Amtrak seems content to plan on that not happening for another 30 years.

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Actually, many people do daily or semi-daily commutes already. I commute and sometimes it's hard to find seats when taking the Acela Express between New York and Boston.

At this point I think the problem is price. You only see white collar workers on the express because a round trip is $200+. If any of these people (myself included) had to foot the bill for the train tickets I doubt the trains would be nearly as full as they are.

Congress has

1) Only chosen to buy 20 Acela trainsets, with one first class, one cafe, and four business class cars each, and I believe four of those are always scheduled to be undergoing maintenance at any given time.

2) Told Amtrak to try to make a profit

Given the constrains of needing to somehow decide which people get to use the inadequate number of seats, and trying to make money, how do you kill two birds with one stone?

The ridiculous thing about the Acela is that it's significantly more expensive than the "normal" train, but only cuts about 40 minutes from the trip. (Checking Amtrak.com showed me ~4:15 for the normal train, 3:36 for the Acela.) When I was commuting twice a week NYC-BOS, I couldn't possibly justify the price difference, especially if you compare it to the $20 Bolt Bus or Greyhound tickets.

Point being: the Acela (IMHO) doesn't qualify as a high-speed train if only because it doesn't "feel" high-speed compared to the other options. Commuting in 3.5 or 4 hours is emotionally irrelevant. Commuting in 1.5 hours would feel remarkably different.

Actually, the ridiculous thing about the Acela, is that in some cases, it's both cheaper and faster to take a plane. Faster, sure; but cheaper? If I've justified the price of the Acela, why wouldn't I want to take a plane, especially if it's faster.

The real problem is that the existing rail lines aren't straight enough for truly high speed rail. To build new ones, you would need broad public support (because you're going to be kicking people out of their homes with eminent domain).

I see no reason you can't build tunnels 100-200 feet underneath people's homes to avoid kicking people out, but that has the problem that you need broad public support for spending that money. Then again, if we redirected 10% of our military spending to high speed rail, that would probably address the funding issues adequately.

The other thing is that greater superelevation would increase speeds possible through the existing curves. But as you increase superelevation, you potentially increase the minimum safe speed through that segment of track, and having 0 MPH be a safe speed is desireable. There may be some maglev derivative that could help with that problem. Rubber tires on concrete also have greater friction, which may allow them to tolerate a greater amount of unbalanced superelevation.

The reason is that it's incredibly, fantastically expensive, and in a lot of places there's water down there.

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