Trains are not for trips like Philly to Austin. They are for trips between Houston, Austin, and Dallas. In those trips, there is significant overhead to air tra

Trains are not for trips like Philly to Austin. They are for trips between Houston, Austin, and Dallas. In those trips, there is significant overhead to air travel: the time it takes to go to the airport + go through security + take off + climb thousands of feet + descend + land + get your baggage + drive from the airport into the city. The cost to fly these short trips is disproportionate to their distance when compared to longer trips. That is why so most people drive instead. With trains, you reduce/eliminate almost all of that overhead. If you have a train that goes only 120mph between Houston and Austin, you have reduced the travel time from 3.5-4 hours to 1.5 hours each way. That is a huge savings in time that makes a lot of currently-infeasible trips practical. Will it be cheap? Based on my experience riding the trains in Japan, I would say it is going to be much cheaper than flying and more expensive than taking buses and/or slower passenger trains. If the high-speed train people were smart, they'd price it at exactly the price of driving (gas-wise) in the beginning in order to build demand, and then ramp up the price as trains start getting sold out.