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Comment by double_nan | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know: San Jose - Seattle is ~900 miles or 1400km-1500km. That is 5-6 hours direct train at best at 300kmh. I don’t see this as something beneficial to a plane. Borderline comparable to flying and only because of slow TSA.

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~5h is how long a train takes from Warsaw to Berlin, compared to ~1h by plane (~2-3h including getting to and from airport), and I know multiple people who still prefer the train - even when they are able to easily afford any mode of transportation.

With the train, you have way more freedom in choosing the time and the hour. You have multiple trains leaving during the day, and you can choose 30 min before needing to hop onto one. Also, if you miss one, you just wait for the next one.

Also, on the train you can work, relax and stretch your legs or eat freely. So it doesn't feel like lost time really. Planes often do, even if you travel business.

SeaTac is out in the middle of nowhere and easily one of the most unpleasant airports I've ever flown out of. Last time I had to go through immigration at SEA there was vomit smeared all over the floor.

Meanwhile the Amtrak station in Seattle is centrally located, about fifteen minutes to downtown by tram. The Amtrak station in Portland is pretty much right in the middle of downtown. I don't know that I'd want to go from the Bay Area to Seattle on a train, but something like Portland to Seattle would benefit greatly from HSR (currently it's about a 4 hour trip).

There are plans for HSR between Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR. Washington state just allocated a few hundred million to advance design. I think they are waiting for some matching federal grants before proceeding. I think they are hoping for a high speed line within 10 years or something.

I actually think that if the High Speed line is built all the way south to Eugene it kind of makes sense to build a traditional electrified rail way between Eugene and Redding CA. through Medford, and a higher speed line to Sacramento where it could interline with California High-Speed Rail to LA. Connecting Medford with Redding and Eugene with a traditional rail should be worth it on its own, but with the surrounding high speed lines it becomes possible to operate a west coast sleeper between Seattle and LA in like 10-13 hours (as opposed to the current 36 hours).

There's so little between Eugene and Redding (which itself is mostly just meth) that HSR almost makes more sense for that stretch.

150 000 people live in the Medford urban area. There are popular tourist activities close by. This stop would serve both the locals in the Medford area and tourists alike. In fact it could really help Medford’s economy as the drive from Seattle or San Francisco is intense, it would enable tourists to take an easy train ride there and rent a car for further tourist activities (or simply take the bus to Ashland for some hot springs or a Shakespeare play).

But more importantly though, this portion is very mountainous, making finding a high speed alignment without unrealistic amount of tunneling impossible. A traditional electrified train with speeds up to 120 MPH is far more likely to actually happen, and would do plenty to enrich the area as well as provide an alternative to flying between the Pacific North West and California.

You’re really missing the point. These places are remote and neglected. Meth is a symptom. Connect them to jobs and opportunity and we can develop thriving communities along the rail corridor. That’s where midwest and west coast cities originated in the first place.

King Street Station is a fifteen minute walk from “downtown”. It’s basically in downtown already and by light rail is one stop to the first “downtown” stop at University Street. It’s more like 4 minutes by train. They come every 10 minutes so that’s 15 minutes worst case.

The same light rail will take you anywhere from the airport in the south to the northern edge of the city. Within a decade it will go as far south as Tacoma. In a couple years a new connecting line will reach Bellevue. Eventually as far as Redmond (Microsoft). My own neighborhood of West Seattle will connect in 2035.

The future is bright for the west coast. If HSR connects us all this will be the most desirable place on Earth.

That's roughly the same time as Paris-Nice, which is a very heavily used high speed rail corridor. Not enough to make the plane route unviable like it did with Paris-Lyon and Paris-Bordeaux, but there are drastically less planes now, so it's still a massive net win.

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