Some brief thoughts:
- It was so fast! Under 90 minutes for a journey which would have taken a few hours by car. Clearly much faster than a plane on this particular route, due to extra waiting and security in airports.
- It was also a very comfortable mode. If you’re traveling with friends, it’d be very easy to socialize around a table. Quieter than a car or plane as well.
- Love being able to hop on/hop off without a huge ordeal or waiting in a long line.
- Too expensive for the route. I would have to book much further in advance to think it was worth it. I think maybe 6x the cost of driving, if I compared to a similar route in the US.
- Obviously this is a high speed route. That doesn’t exist between all cities.
- Looking at other tickets, connecting between two routes can be tricky. For example, if I wanted to go from Amsterdam to London, I’d might transfer to a different train in Paris. That adds a huge amount of time.
I mean, compared to the US, it’s a delight! For a similar city-to-city distance (Portland to Seattle), I’d love a 90min transit mode, especially if it was relatively cheap.
Obviously there are still some route and cost drawbacks, but there just isn’t much comparable in the US. It’s a much better system, obviously, even if it’s not perfect. At least they have high speed rail!