Unfortunately, even if the NIMBY people were cool with it or the government and big businesses simply decided to just ignore them and build it anyway, the big problem is “Can you make a train that goes faster than a plane?”. Until that hurdle is cleared the airlines are still pretty much the only game in town for high-speed travel across a country as big as the US. Even planes you’ll often have layovers and need to change from one flight to another.
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Remember - the East Coast Champion was one of the Primer ‘Limited’s’, The joint operation of PRR, RF&P, ACL and FEC and was the first Streamliner on the route. Of course, when the train was originated in the late 1930’s it was all coach. After the War it served both coach and Pullman clienteles.
High speed is great, until you have a target rich environment. Each Florida vacationer has the option of many different ‘Florida Vacations’ depending upon which beach community they favor,
To serve intermediate steps, try reverting to limiteds and skipping alternate stops?
There is only one train in the country that meets that standard!
AutoTrain
I thought there were many METRA trains that did this.
As I recall, some multiple trains, departing close together in time, skip alternate stops – most likely this is outbound from the city at rush hour, but it could be done with inbound service delayed sequentially a few minutes to prevent leapfrogging or stopping on adjacent tracks.
There have also been trains inbound that serve a certain number of stations, then run express the rest of the way. This would be much more attractive with autonomous or semiautonomous trains, as the cost of providing a given capacity in, say, three separate trains vs. one longer one will largely be in the ‘human capital’.
The problem with these approaches is that there is little guarantee that ‘intermediate’ passengers will board at one station and be able to get off at the particular one they want. A kinda-sorta workaround is the system used for over a century on the New York IRT in part of Manhattan: certain of the ‘skip stops’ are common to all trains, so while you won’t get a ‘one-seat ride’ at least there will be minimum, and reasonably predictable, dwell. That system also lends itself to the ‘machinery’ needed for the flag-stop system we were discussing, where a skip-stop train could in fact make a ‘skipped’ stop, “departing passengers only”, to accommodate an interurban-style rider.
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One thing to remember is trains make intermediate stops, unlike most airline trips.
Lets say you built a high-speed line essentially recreating the old Rock Island Rocket route - Twin Cities/Kansas City/DFW/Houston. Would a lot of people take the train from St. Paul to Houston? No. But there might be alot of people wanting to go from Dallas to Houston…or Des Moines to Kansas City…or St. Paul to Rochester MN (Mayo Clinic).
In these shorter trips, a high speed train could compete with planes, when you factor everything in.
That used to be common on some L lines in Chicago with A, B and AB stops.
I don’t know if we should or not, but I think it won’t happen because someone can’t make money doing it. I watched a video today that talked about the Centry Limited how it came to be and why it died out. There is too much competition for passengers. Air travel is cheap (kind of) and much quicker. People like their cars too.
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It depends but most Metra rush hour express trains run nonstop to a zone and then make most/all stops in that zone. The old IC was I believe the first to institute that maybe 70s. Makes maximum use of the infrastructure.
Most non rush hour Metras make all stops. Only a few get zoned.
The CTA was famous for skip stop patterns up to about the 2000. When I returned to Chicago in 2003 they have made all stops except the Evanston Express during rush hours which makes all stops in Evanston then select stops in the city.
I have the answer to the existing track/new ROW/Highway Median conundrum. None will work right now because the people, as a whole, don’t care about it. If there was overwhelming public support for it, a way would be found to do it. It would probably be a combination of all of the above.
Airline route structures in many cases are based on intermediate stops. The Hub and spoke form of operation has the Hub being the intermediate stop on the overall flight between two spoke locations.