this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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That's just not reasonably possible in the U.S. If I wanted to go Orlando to Detroit on a train that averaged 100mph without stopping it would take 12-13 hours, not including the trips to and from the train stations boarding etc. To California you'd have to throw another 1,000 miles on to that, so an extra 10 hours. 26-44 hours of travel on a weekend trip sounds horrible. If I were going for a week, sure. (Also a train without stops is hypothetical, it would take longer even if the train could go 150mph)
The “cross country in a weekend” is a bit of an exaggeration but Detroit to Chicago, Detroit to Minneapolis, Detroit to New York City should be perfectly reasonable for a weekend trip if trains went at a reasonable high speed.
There’s zero reason for train to be slower than automobile.
Was curious about the lake on that last one, ouch. That one might be hard with any speed rail. Chicago Detroit should be easy, Minneapolis a little harder but you could probably get it down to 6 hours each way
For New York, train goes via Toronto. It’s 16h by train vs 9.5h by car. 9 hours is right at the limit of what I would consider not-insane for a weekend trip (19h travel for 38h visit gives 2:1 ratio of visit:travel time).
We have immediate benefits from intercity rail centered on NYC, we would have immediate benefits from intercity high speed rail centered on Chicago ….. then it would show immediate benefits to connect the two.
If you had a sleeper car it'd work alright. Obviously leaving Friday night would make it much nicer. Otherwise your always stuck with after dark Saturday night, and maybe a couple hours Sunday morning. But if you can get bottomless mimosas with breakfast and sleep during the 9 hours back it'd make you be able to leave in the afternoon Sunday.