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If you regularly fly, security isn't much of an issue with precheck or clear. You can also fly into newark and take path, much faster to get to downtown, or fly

If you regularly fly, security isn't much of an issue with precheck or clear. You can also fly into newark and take path, much faster to get to downtown, or fly into laguardia and uber (ok laguardia sucks I'm not really an advocate for this). The problem with train investment is it starts to look really uninteresting for most people once the train travel time is 5+ hours. The investment in improving airport connectivity and flexibility has dramatically wider use cases and ROI versus train investment, which is notoriously expensive and realistically only going to serve a very limited set of use cases. In Europe there are more cases for trains. Density and centralization is much higher. When you build a train line in central Switzerland you are going to reach a much higher percentage of the population, justifying the investment of national resources. That is simply not the case in the United States.

jfim 6y ago
Even with precheck, one still has to show up at the airport earlier than a train, since boarding stops 10-15 minutes prior to departure, TSA adds at least five to ten minutes, and the terminal topology of large airports requires a long walk from the curb to the gate. For trains, even large stations don't have that long a walk, since the tracks run parallel to one another. As long as one shows up before the train pulls into the station, it's all good. As you point out, trains definitely don't replace all flights, but for some dense corridors in the US (eg. Washington-Philadelphia-NYC-Boston, Dallas-Houston, San Francisco-San Jose-Los Angeles-San Diego) high speed rail would offer a better experience (larger seats, more comfortable ride, more uninterrupted time for working) and a comparable door to door time.