This is exactly the point that keeps getting overlooked. Traveling from DC to Philly, or Philly to NYC, should take 45 minutes or an hour, the same way travelin

This is exactly the point that keeps getting overlooked. Traveling from DC to Philly, or Philly to NYC, should take 45 minutes or an hour, the same way traveling from Beijing to Tianjin or Shanghai to Hangzhou takes 45 minutes or an hour. HSR isn't for connecting regions to one another. Air already does that well. HSR is for drawing cities within a region closer to one another.