"...the Next-Gen High Speed Rail line would reduce the travel time between Washington, D.C., and New York City from 162 minutes to 96 minutes. The travel time between New York and Boston would go from 215 minutes to 84 minutes."
So if you do the math, Washington, D.C. to Boston currently takes 6 hours and 17 minutes, not counting delays due to MARC, SEPTA, NJ Transit, Metro-North, and the MBTA Commuter Rail clogging up the tracks. The vision is to reduce this travel time to 3 hours to cover the same 440 miles by the year 2040. So instead of covering a maximum 70 miles per hour, we'll have trains that can go a maximum of 147 miles per hour 30 years from now. A nice improvement but, the Chinese already have a line in existence today that covers the 75 miles from Beijing to Tianjin in 25 minutes (or, 180 miles per hour. TODAY!)
So, in other words, is our vision to become today's China in the next 30 years? Not really, but why should it take us 30 years to do what's best for commuters (faster trips), the environment (fewer cars on the road), and national security (reduced usage of petrodictator's oil and you can't fly a train into a building unless there are tracks that lead to one)?
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