There’s a french engineer joke in here somewhere
I think it’s in case Germany decides to invade again. They can get away a lot faster
Another point: HSTs are VERY expensive to maintain! The japanese “Bullet” train has its rails inspected every night! Things you could ignore on a low-speed train can cause CATASTROPHIC failure at 300 MPH. The TGV has an excellent safety record-but I’m sure the French spend a LOT of money maintaining it. Who needs to travel, anyway? With the internet, and virtual reality, stay at home!
A small hijack, but I chose to return from New Jersey Via train on this upcoming Easter Weekend, rather than fly. With the connection and layover time, the travel time for an airline ticket was about 6 hours or so. Not counting the “get to the airport 2 hours early” time. Total time spent on the train is around 7.5 hours. So to me it’s a no brainer. I’m able to travel in business class on the train for $112.00, I can get up when I want. They provide power for my laptop, a snack car, and more interesting scenery.
More people do travel by car. Whenever we have a three-day weekend and they talk about weekend travel volumes on the news, the percentage of trips made by car is usually in the eighties, with most of the rest going by air.
For fun, I decided to look up trips to Toronto.
A WestJet flight from Montreal to Toronto leaving on Saturday at 8 AM and returning on Sunday at 6:45 PM (it wouldn’t let me leave any later) costs $312.49 return, not counting airport fees and whatnot.
The plane ride itself takes 1 hour 18 minutes. Plus 1 hour 10 minutes to get from my house to the airport by transit, plus 1 hour 30 minutes pre-departure, plus 30 minutes to get out of the airport again, plus 50 minutes to get to downtown Toronto by transit.
Total travel time: 5 hours 18 minutes each way.
VIA costs $278.04 including taxes, with no surcharges. It leaves Montreal at 6:55 AM and returns at 6:35 PM. Travel time: 4 hrs 30 minutes each way. Add a generous hour for transit to the (right downtown) train station and check-in, and call it 5 hrs 30 min.
And you’re not subjected to irritating searches, and there’s more leg room, and the scenery is better. What’s not to love?
According to driving direction site - it’s an under 6 hour drive and even in Canada, less than $100 in gas each way.
Plus, when you arrive in Montreal, you’ll have your car in case you want to go to somewhere nearby.
And you can leave when you want, arrive when you want, and stop along the way if something looks interesting. (Yes, you can do that on the train, but then you’ll get stuck there for an indeterminate amount of time.)
Well, not everyone, especially in Toronto and Montreal, has a car, or the desire or ability to drive long distances, or to operate a car in an unfamiliar city.
[bolding mine]
Yes, we Floridians can certainly attest to the fact that those from Canada have difficulty operating their cars in unfamiliar cities. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
I certainly think distance is the main problem with American HSTs. Pick a half dozen of the largest cities in France, or Germany. They can’t be more than a few hundred miles apart. But there’s no way it would be cost effective in the US to link NYC, L.A., Atlanta, Chicago, etc.
Even the short-distance HSTs never seem to get off the ground. They’ve been arguing about a proposed high speed train between Orlando and Tampa for years. It’s waaaay too expensive, and that’s less than 200 miles.
I’ve driven in and through Montreal before. I’ve driven in Toronto more times than I can count, since I lived there for a number of years. Like New York and Chicago (both of which I have also driven in), neither Toronto nor Montreal is very forgiving to the unfamiliar-with-the-city driver.
But each city does have a great public transit system. Subways and buses run frequently to where you want them to go in the city, and in Toronto at least, a regional transit system similar to Chicago’s Metra system makes travel to and from the communities beyind the city borders possible. I would imagine Montreal has something similar. And of course, each has plenty of taxis that will break numerous traffic laws to get to your side of the street if you flag one down.
Which makes the train a viable way to go to and from these cities. Comfortable, as fast as Matt says, cheaper than flying, and not stopped by winter, traffic jams on the 401, or somebody bringing a bottle of water on board.
Bombing a train, OTOH, would be easy, unless every foot of track is between two security fences meeting in an arch overhead.
Unless I was going to a variety of destinations outside of town, or was carrying a lot of stuff, why would I want to take a car between Toronto and Montreal? In both cities, the intercity train stations are right downtown; hotels, shopping, the financial districts, and public transport (regional trains, subway/metro, and buses/streetcars) are immediately accessible.
For the unencumbered traveller, the train is comparable in total travel time to the plane (as matt_mcl noted), and you don’t have to deal with the hassle of parking. Plus, you can nap on the way.
I used to drive between Whitby and Ottawa via relatives in Peterborough (so no train was available), and parking near my sister’s place on Elgin Street in Ottawa was always a royal pain in the butt. I was always aware of the car sitting unprotected on the street; I had to move it at inconvenient times to avoid parking tickets (or search and search for overnight parking). 
I really missed the convenience of just hopping off a public transport vehicle and forgetting about it.
True, the cheapest fares on the train require advance planning, but that is also true of bus and plane.
For what it’s worth, and things may have changed, but I found that first class on VIA between Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal was still less expensive than a cattle-class flight on any air carrier. I cannot speak to the advance-purchase fare, but I do recall that it was easier and cheaper for me to take GO transit into Toronto Union Station and transfer to the VIA1 class of the Ottawa/Montreal train than it was to take a cab to Pearson for a cattle-class flight to Ottawa/Montreal. When all the pluses and minuses were added up, even a last-minute VIA1 ticket cost less than a pre-booked Air Canada ticket plus airport transfers. But that was a few years ago; fares and arrangements in Ontario and Quebec may have changed.
But damn, I miss travelling by train. C’mon, provincial and federal governments of Canada, give us passenger trains in Alberta!
Are you kidding? It’s the brains behind that hilarious joke about our national bicameral legislature being the opposite of progress. C’mon! It’s a side splitter!
True.
And I have no idea about driving in between Montreal & Toronto or in either city alone, for that matter. And from the numbers you posted, for that trip, rail travel beats air travel.
But to get people to ride trains more frequently to more places, it has to seem to be a better solution than car travel as well. In my corner of the country, that just doesn’t seem to be true.
You think ?
I guess it depends on your choice of measurement.
A Google search reveals the following
Richest countries on Earth based on GDP Per capita.
1 Luxembourg $55,100
2 Norway $37,800
3 USA $37,800
Yeah, but existing Amtrak would be High Speed Rail in Luxembourg.
That’s a lot of stamps.
Some years ago, a high-speed rail line was proposed for Texas–a triangular route connecting Houston, Dallas & San Antonio.
Lobbying by Southwest Airlines was a big reason the proposal went nowhere.