As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail
This topic comes up routinely on Hacker News, and it&#x27;s no surprise why: there are a lot of Europeans interacting with a lot of Americans here, and European high speed rail is an enviable asset for the continent.<p>But last time we talked about this, it seemed to me that if you looked into the details, it was clear why we don&#x27;t have HSR in the US. Even assuming we built a network that operated at Shanghai Maglev speeds, at the distances the network would need to operate, air travel would remain significantly more economical.<p>In a thread 3 years ago, I made a list of the top US cities by GDP, and then broke out the crow-flies ground distances between them:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8713324" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8713324</a><p>Of the 55 edges on this graph, only 6 were 700 miles apart or less. Several of those are already served by the Acela.<p>There&#x27;s a definite advantage to rail over air, in that rail can deposit you right in the middle of the city you&#x27;re heading to. But that advantage can&#x27;t make up for the fact that no train is going to compete with a plane for trips between the largest US cities.