Maintnance for rolling stock, including passenger cars and locomotives is most directly effected by the hours of operation. Not only that, but the personnel costs would drop by 66% as well. In addition, you would need fewer trainsets to cover the same schedules.

The benefits amtrak’s NEC would see could then be used to help reduce Amtrak’s overruns, and fund other high volume inter city corridors.

I live in New England, just north of the dukes old stomping grounds, and in my 50 years of life, I’ve traveled on Amtrak one time, coast to coast, in sleepers, loved almost every minute of it (those substandard freight tracks in the midwest are downright dangerous when you are walking in the passenger car on the upper level). The down side apart from that is where I had to surrender 3 days of my vacation just to ‘get there’. I’d only save a few hours if the Chicago to LA speed increased 50%, because that leg hit 70MPH and the delays were those bad tracks, refueling in Phoenix, yielding rights of way and all the stops. The Boston to Chicago leg would need considerable improvement to yield significant time reduction, if I recall the car steward correctly, we averaged about 50MPH, with delays caused by trackage related issues (curve too sharp for higher speeds, many grade crossings on the existing rail corridor, which existed mostly because freight still ran on rail).

I’d be looking for those rail services to improve, certainly.

I’m not at all sure that local passenger rail will work well for me. I live 50 minutes from the nearest passenger rail terminal (that commute time is not an estimate, I drove it daily for over a year)… then add a 30+ minute commute to get into Boston from that terminal. I can presently do that in my car, since I rarely go to Boston. If I had some reason to regularly commute at all by passenger rail, I most likely won’t be going into the parts of Boston where mass transit is in service (and for that end, is the T and is MBTA all that reliable?), that means my automobile drive would be significantly less than 80 minutes. If I commute by rail to areas where I’ve seen employers, I’m pretty sure I’d need a cab from whatever passenger terminal was closest to where the employer did business. Put those costs and time delays together and I might as well keep the car.

As such, I feel the latter improvements would not impact my life very much, that aside from my appreciating the trend towards greener transportation for others.

I like balloons.

-Jebediah

As for your “21st Century technology” (sic), it looks like some form of maglev; if so, how are you going to keep it in proper alignment when I understand most maglevs have tolerances to within 12-15 mm or so?? Like any form of fixed guideway, high speeds = closer tolerances.

It would be better if he was wearing a train conductor’s hat though.