This is a better solution. I think a lot of high speed rail enthusiasts think that if we build the passengers will come. Its really unproven, I think American cities are so different to most of the world high speed rail would be unpopular. Very few people want to go from downtown one city to another - most city centers aren't that nice and when you get to your destination you'll need a car anyway.
Amtrak's ridership has been growing and hit an all time high. The Northeast Corridor is a profitable route which is held back by century old infrastructure. If it actually had real high speed spanning the whole route it's ridership absolutely go up. Moreover your comments on not wanting to go from city center to city center are very off. Going from Union Station DC to Penn Station Philly, or NYC is really nice. Have you ever rode Amtrak, specifically that route?
The ridership and convenience of the Acela route is really not representative of the rest of the country.
It's extremely speculative to extrapolate that dense route with the induced demand for travelers going from Kansas City union station to Denver union station... with absolutely nothing in-between.
The new Borealis route (short run of the Empire Builder from Chicago to St. Paul) was profitable in like, weeks, after it started running. It is consistently sold out.
Demand for traveling from city to city in the US is unproven? What is 819 million domestic airplane passengers in 2023? [0] That's an average of 2.2 million people per day. Granted flying will almost always win for cross-country trips, but I'd bet a significant chunk of those flights are within a range competitive with HSR.
How is it distinct in any way that would undermine their argument? Do people go airport to airport to then not drive, where people going to downtown would want to drive? Their point is that people go to other cities without their vehicle all the time with plane travel, so high speed rail would have plenty of demand up to a certain distance.
20 years ago I backpacked around Europe on a Eurail pass for all of April and part of May. I even paid the supplement for the high speed trains.
Most of the time, the trains were all but empty.
I think eventually Boston-NYC type routes will be handled by quad-copter type drones that land right in the city center. That type of passenger rail will be obsolete
For one, that was 20 years ago. Ridership has increased significantly since through a combination of deliberate EU policy and efforts to remove the barriers that made long distance rail journeys so terrible decades ago. Old experiences riding long distance international trains (likely at non-peak hours), outside peak tourist season aren't necessarily representative of the modern experience.
