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Basically the Acela corridor only works because Boston, New York, and Washington DC actually have working subway systems, so when you get dumped off at the trai

Basically the Acela corridor only works because Boston, New York, and Washington DC actually have working subway systems, so when you get dumped off at the train station, you can get somewhere within the city without paying a bajillion dollars in taxis or Ubers. People also like to point at the German train system, which is very good, but mostly people have the experience of coming into Berlin on it, and again, Berlin has one of the best public transit systems in the world.

techsupporter 6y ago
Agreed about Berlin, but to me that says that as part of a commitment to HSR, we also have a commitment to local transport. Fortunately, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit here. For example, I live in Seattle. We regularly vote to tax ourselves to build and operate transit service. In 2019, just before the pandemic hit, we had a 10-minute citywide bus network with fast, easy transfers across about 85% of the city. People used the heck out of it, especially in combination with the two light rail stations that opened in 2016. When my spouse and I took a three-week trip across Germany to see where parts of our family are from[0], we didn't touch the wheel of a car once. Big city like Frankfurt, small town like Lutherstadt Wittenberg, in-between like Leipzig, they all worked. They were some combination of walkable, understandable bus service, and local rail. There's infrastructure and there's culture. Americans don't have the idea that cities and towns can be accessible on foot and by transport, so we don't hold ourselves to that standard. But we could, with no loss of convenience for many of us.