acela

When people talk about how great Amtrak is on the east coast, they mean that the Acela is really great.

Also: high-speed rail is going to go where the Acela already is, and the Acela is already fast enough to be viable and competitive.

If planes have to account for delays, so do trains: the on-time performance of the Acela is comparable.

I prefer the Acela to a Jetblue NYC-IAD(DC), but the flight is the better call for that route.

Weekday Acela service is on time and nice, but the price is still ridiculous.

The Acela is very popular and actually profitable.

The Acela cars are nice, but their expense was driven by a feature they largely don't use.

Just 4% of the most economically important trips not already served by the Acela are amenable to rail transit.

You would really compare German intercity travel to Acela (i.e., rail service on the Boston-NYC-Philly-DC route)?

Many cities on the East Coast have a Caltrain like system in the Amtrak Acela trains.

You really have to look at the sum of Acela and Northeast Corridor but it was still a substantial increase.

The Northeast regional between DC and NYC is only marginally slower than Acela (3.5 hours).

The "renaissance" is the Acela, and not much more.

It's not "large, closely-spaced cities"; it's the Acela.

The point is that Amtrak is not really viable on the non-Acela routes.

That would mean improving service on the Northeast corridor, to improve speeds for Acela, and adding additional higher speed service to connecting cities.

Of course it doesn't: neither Texas nor California have routes that would be economical for an Acela-like service.