A few years ago I had to go between Detroit and Baltimore every couple weeks.
It was a 90 minute flight, 9-10 hour drive, 17 hours by Amtrak or 22 hours by Greyhound.
The reason was that I had to take a new job and it took several months to sell the house. I drove home every couple weekends to see my wife and kids.
We didn’t really have any money to speak of so driving was the way to go.
Let’s say with High Speed Rail, the time goes from 17 hours to 8.5 hours halving the time between the two cities...
The High Speed Train is still going to stop multiple time and may not be direct, meaning you may have to travel to a hub train station to then take a another train to your final destination....
Either way it’s still going to be slower than air travel and not as convenient it most cases...
The only way around that is to subsidize high speed rail travel lowering it’s cost while simultaneously raising the cost of air and automobile travel....
If gasoline is $10/gallon or more, which it surely will be if we continue down this “Green New Deal” path of insanity....or you have an EV that needs to be charged every 300 miles maybe technology makes that irrelevant..
Thru taxes and other means what happens when the $200 airline ticket goes to $1000 or more but the high speed rail ticket goes to $100 or perhaps $200.....
Government intervention is the only way to make high speed rail work, IMO....and at that point the service will be worth taking.....