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Comment by blackaspen | Hacker News Reader

Even with the fact that planes fly slower now than in the 60s, I'll gladly fly DEN-SFO. I can be finishing dinner in Palo Alto when you're in the Salt Flats.

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Unless it's raining/snowing/windy in Denver or SF (or even an unrelated location like Chicago or Boston which might prevent your aircraft from getting to DEN in the first place) in which case you might be sleeping in an airport terminal while masklinn is finishing a late supper in Palo Alto.

I write this as someone who has had two cancellations and 6 delays over ten air trips in the past three months.

And what are the stats for delays in mag-lev ecosystems? Given that you know how unreliable flight ecosystems are and can quantify the delays, I'm assuming you have a basis for comparison in making such a confident statement.

Holy Extrapolation Batman! Or, "We can estimate, using data from extant high-speed rail networks." I think you'll find that HSR generally has good on-time performance where it is not forced to share lines with freight trains (ie, not Amtrak). Since there are no mag-lev freight trains, and no plans to build any, it's reasonable to think that mag-lev trains would only be affected by weather in very extreme circumstances (not your run of the mill snow storm).

On a train, you could comfortably eat dinner on the way.

Not sure why you're replying to my comment, I noted the upper competitive range of HSR against plane — as far as I'm concerned — is 1500km with 1000km for superiority. Denver to SF is more than 2000km, it's way beyond what I consider competitive HSR ranges with current techs.

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