Agreed though that the Acela cooridor is the most reasonable place for the US to invest in high speed rail
The existing track corridor in New England is not appropriate for true high-speed train service. That really requires new right-of-ways, which would be extremely expensive in the Northeast.
There are currently plans for the next version of Acela but it is more about replacing aging equipment than any true speed upgrade. The Acela trains are almost 20 years old but I've never been on one as the price difference from the regular service isn't worth the small increase in time. Here are some numbers. I'm showing the cheapest "Saver" fares which are limited, must be purchased in advance, and have strict refund rules. I just picked November 4 as the date for advanced purchase (about +30 days):
NYC to Washington DC.
Acela Non-Stop: $137, 2h37m
Acela Regular: $137, 2h57m (+20m from non-stop)
NorthEast Reg: $54, 3h25m (+48m from non-stop)
Acela Non-Stop: $144, 6h39m
Acela Regular: $144, 7h5m (+21m from non-stop)
NorthEast Reg: $81, 7h59m (+1h20m from non-stop)
I think the bigger advantage for China is that the decision to run the track on some alignment doesn’t get litigated and re-litigated for years before construction is allowed to begin.
Non-stop is an important element of a truly fast train. Firstly because you don't want to be constantly stopping and starting, but also because you don't want to detour your route through a dozen cities which aren't conveniently on a straight-line route to your destination.
So if you want to make a train run as fast as possible between Boston, NYC and DC, you're telling Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and maybe Delaware, "Hey, we want to take a big chunk of your land for our project, and no, we don't want our super-fast trains to stop at any of your cities, and we can't even run a slower train because making the tracks actually go through the right parts of your cities would slow down our fast trains too much."
Have fun with your negotiations!
1. Direct - They have the least stops and are the fastest. They don't go into towns. They go around them. 2. Express - They only stop at the largest towns. 3. Regular - They are the slowest and stop at every town.
You then use timing to make sure that they don't crash. The slow train will generally stop on the track and wait while the direct overtakes it (you don't want them both moving at the same time).
This isn't new. It's be around for 100 of years.
If you have three cities on a perfectly straight line, you can run your high-speed trains as above.
If the city in the middle is not on a straight line path between the two end cities, now your train tracks need to curve to connect the three. If you make the curve a large enough, smooth enough curve, it won't hurt your maximum speed much, but when you're talking "1000 km/hr" ... and in any case, you're also adding miles to your route, and if you make your route 20% longer to weave from city to city along the way, you are also make it 20% slower.