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Comment by 999900000999 | Hacker News Reader

That's straight math. Not assuming any stops or slow downs.

According to Gemini this hypothetical train would take about 18 hours.

It would also cost hundreds of billions of dollars and a decade to build.

Doesn't do much for seeing Uncle John next Tuesday.

I like trains. I like them a lot. But they don't work over long distances. Particular when you have dozens of state and city jurisdictions to cross.

Each of them get a vote.

Honestly I'd be happy just to have quality HSR on the East Coast. Boston to Richmond takes like 12 hours right now.

Maybe the West Coast could get a Seattle to San Diego route.

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18 hours with seats comfortable enough to sleep in, easy to get up and move around to lounge cars, wifi, and plenty of pretty views? Add some showers onboard and you're totally set. I think there are plenty of people who would take that over flying. A direct flight from NYC to San Francisco is almost 7 hours, not counting the wildly variable time needed to get to the airport and make it to your gate, and then you're still facing delays and prolonged discomfort.

Yes, or trains with comfortable sleeper coaches. This is how a lot of intercity rail works in India. I took the Delhi-Bombay Rajdhani express all the time when I was younger; would catch the train in the evening, tasty dinner and breakfast provided on train. The views were breathtaking; its the first time the vastness of India became so clear to me (and how many people were still engaged in farming). It would be so nice to have that in the US.

> It would also cost hundreds of billions of dollars and a decade to build. Doesn't do much for seeing Uncle John next Tuesday.

You just described the building of the interstate highway system, but I doubt there’s a person alive who would say it wasn’t worthwhile.

I fear Americans are simple to selfish to have any desire to do time consuming expensive things that will improve their country long term. They just want benefits for themselves , now.

I would like to fix our health care system first.

Meanwhile, the government could announce a bailout of Spirit tonight.

Wouldn't take nearly as much effort.

> I would like to fix our health care system first

Good ol Zoidberg once again says “why not both?”

If you don’t fix anything else until healthcare is fixed, you’ll be fixing nothing until the end of time

I think Americans aren’t as selfish as most people believe; it’s just that they don’t know any better. Education and awareness is key to change that.

I don't think it is neither education nor awareness, our core problem and what is an eventual doom of this country lies in the fact that with the two political parties that we have and extremely non-functional government we are no longer capable of doing long-term things. whatever party X tries to do, they get a few years and then when party Y takes over their first order of business is to dismantle everything that party X did (tried to do) in the previous two years. while china can create "10-year plan" the america is no longer capable of creating any such thing and this is destroying the country, little by little...

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