Why North Atlantic High Speed Rail Is Still a Pipe Dream

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My family and I drove from DC to New York this past weekend. It was a mistake. It was horrendous. There are no benefits to driving, none. You may ask, "but you have a 2 year old, driving has to be the better option". No, getting to New York faster is the better option. Getting there on a train, where a 2 year old can walk, where if he poops, we can change him without stopping is the better option. Building high speed trains would make family travel incalculably better.

As a software engineer living in Long Island City…I feel attacked 😭

Glad to see much more relatable fictional characters on these videos now. “Sports” guy just felt so unrealistic and disconnected from the average person, but “tech” guy with his luxurious spending habits and disdain for billionaire-funded regional culture wars really could be any one of us

I go to NYC from Hartford every 2-3 weeks and I'm actually grateful that we are least have train services that most other cities don't have. I have multiple train options to get to NYC through Amtrak, CTRail, and Metro-North. It does suck that it takes 2.5 hours but at least it's comfortable, I don't have to drive, and there's a cafe car on Amtrak. With that said, I've ridden the Chinese and Spanish trains, and it's almost science fiction compared to what we have here. The increase in economic output and quality of life would be remarkable if we could accomplish even a quarter of what the Chinese have done. Instead we seem to be in some kind of self-harm loop of buying bigger and bigger gas guzzlers, desperately trying to push down the cost of gas, getting more and more obese, and continuing to wreck our cities.

If only the government gave the same amount in subsidies to Amtrak (read: passenger rail transport in general) that they give to the highways and aviation industry, maybe we’d be in a better place.

I’d kill for 100 minutes from Boston to NYC on a train. I feel like I’m grieving something that I’ve never had 😢

As someone that lives near Boston, if you want to talk about policy failure, It's sometimes cheaper to take Amtrak than it is the MBTA from Boston to Providence.

Some of the high speed trains in Europe are actually registered as air flights with flight numbers, and it is probably those ones that Google is showing you. That allows you to get from for example Valencia to New York via Madrid using a train for the first leg of the journey, on a single ticket, but there will be plenty more train services that don't have flight numbers.

CAHSR is not without issues, but they are making real legitimate progress. We’ll have track and train contracts in the next couple years. Caltrain electrification is humming along as well. I’m 90% confident they will finish this project in my lifetime.

Cleveland not only has a rapid transit link to the airport, but they were actually the FIRST airport in North America to have a direct rapid transit service! I think it says a lot about North American transit when the first city in North America to do this was Cleveland. Something else to consider when talking about why the Acela takes so long to get between NYC and Boston is because part of the section within Connecticut is owned by the CDOT between Stamford and New Haven and the tracks between the RI border and Boston are owned by the MBTA. So the Acela gets stuck. Not to mention the tracks within CT are bumpy and aging, and of course the CT NIMBYs. As for LaGuardia, that AirTrain thing would've been longer than taking the subway to Jackson Heights and then taking a bus. Having to go east on the 7 to Mets-Willets Point just to go back west was silly. Then again, it's not as silly as one of the proposals was to link Harlem-125th Street to LaGuardia with...A GONDOLA! Of course, a direct subway link to LaGuardia is preferable, but this is NYC we are talking about.

I have made the Boston to New York trip dozens of times. When money was tighter I took Megabus or Bolt. Travel times varied wildly between 4 hours up to 8. I eventually upgraded to taking the northeast regional which was cheaper than Acela and at least had consistent travel times, more comfortable than the bus and less hectic than flying.

I've taken the NEC non-Acela service on trips between Boston, Providence, NYC and Baltimore. And although it might be slower in some instances, it is more comfortable and reliable than flying. If booked early enough it is certainly cheaper too. If they made it a true HSR in that corridor it would quickly kill almost all the point-to-point air demand between those cities.

Great stuff, thank you! I've just become a train nerd, and I love it, BUT...  I was making the drive from DC to Phila several times a year to see my parents, and after 20 ish years, finally got tired of that drive, even before I95 collapsed. I'm a slow learner. So now I take Amtrak, sometimes the Acela if the price is comparable. The train times are too few, and then I have to wait in the Philly Amtrak station to connect to regional rail to my parents' hood. The regional rail only leaves about once per hour. Every time I do it now, I think of all your gushing about more trains and coordinated train times in Europe. Thanks for all the good work!

"We just need the Robert Moses of rail to come along and drive a new rail through all that existing development" didn't have "Robert Moses of rail" on my 2023 bingo but here we are. I know the whole California HSR drama is frustrating but honestly, kudos to them for actually giving it a go! When people say it's the train to nowhere, I laugh because as the saying goes...if you build it, they will come. When NYC subway stations like Bay Ridge and Junction Blvd were first built, there was nothing around them! But as time went on, the surrounding areas became urbanized thanks to the stations motivating people to move there! And an advantage CA has is its size, they don't need to cooperate with other states for a regional HSR since it's just California. And while Moynihan Train Hall isn't perfect, it's still an upgrade compared to the post-demolition pre-Moynihan Penn basement that New Yorkers and tourists have been stuck with for decades. Though I wish it had those old school station benches that stations like 30th Street Philly or Hoboken Terminal have so I could just chillax, people-watch and enjoy the views. Also, for Boston, there's a Blue Line station by Logan as well as the Silver Line (which is FREE from Logan). The reason you got that over 30-minute result is because that's a Plymouth & Brockton bus to Hyannis, and the fare between just South Station and Logan...is 14 dollars one way.

I’m a Japanese who booked Boston to NYC this summer. The 370km route is almost equal to Tokyo to Nagoya (1 hour 40 minutes by Shinkansen). I’m taking Northern Regional (4 hours 20 minutes) because taking Acela would double my fee and only 30 minutes faster. Nonetheless, I’m glad I have this option (I make airplanes but hate commercial flying), and I’ll try to enjoy the coastal scenery!

I made a spur of the moment choice to go to NYC and back on the same day from Boston this past weekend. I spent 9 hours on the train for only 8 hours in NY and had to spend well over $200. I would kill for this high speed option

I’m just about to take Acela from PVD to NYC. I’ve had to accept that going from providence to boston is fast (under 30 minutes), but going to NYC at this point it’s about comfort and not speed. It could take less than 2 hours with proper HSR but here we are hitting a nearly 4 hour trip.

“I regret to inform you it’s policy failure week on this channel…” 🤣🤣 love your sense of humor so much.

Amtrak's pricing is so danged random.